When Alert Becomes Alarm: How Hypervigilance Impacts Egg Quality and Low AMH

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TRANSCRIPT - Hypervigilance and Fertility – How Chronic Stress Affects Egg Quality & AMH Levels

 Today's episode, we're digging into hypervigilance.  This is a state of being constantly on edge or overly alert. It might feel like your superpower, helping you stay prepared and in control. But for many, especially when you're trying to conceive, it can actually be a hidden barrier to fertility success. 

It can show up by feeling easily startled, struggling to relax, racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping, physical tension, all of which can keep your body in the stress mode, and chronic stress can seriously impact your egg quality or ovarian reserve, including low AMH levels. So if you've ever felt exhausted from always being on alert and notice these signs in yourself, this episode is for you.

Let's go.

 I'm Sarah Clark, founder of Fab Fertile. For over a decade, my team and I have helped hundreds of couples improve their chances of pregnancy success, whether naturally or through IVF. We specialize in supporting those with low AMH, high FSH, diminished ovarian reserve, premature ovarian insufficiency, and recurrent pregnancy loss.

Through functional lab testing and personalized fertility strategies, we're diving into hypervigilance and how this superpower might actually be standing in your way of fertility success. This episode is for you if you're constantly feeling like you need to be on or in control of your fertility journey, researching, tracking, planning, every detail, and you struggle to relax or switch off.

Even when you're doing all the right things to support your hormones and egg quality, you've been told that your AMH is low, that you have diminished ovarian reserve, and you're wondering if stress is playing a bigger role than you thought. Thanks so much for listening.

I'm so thankful that you're here. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow, and if you know someone else who's on the fertility journey, please share this podcast with 'em.

 Okay, so let's get into the episode. If so, if you have ever felt like you can't stop researching. Yeah, that's me. Times of distress unknown or I got to figure something, I go into research mode. So if you can't stop researching, if you can't stop tracking, if you can't stop worrying. This episode is for you.

We're diving into feeling hypervigilant and really how that's going to impact egg quality and ovarian reserve. So, exactly what is someone who's feeling hypervigilant is a survival mechanism. It is rooted in fear. Fear of missing something of things going wrong or being caught off guard.

And you might recognize this as constantly scanning for problems over researching, second guessing decisions. You hire someone, you got to check the checker, but you can never quite relax and you're really micromanaging your fertility journey. You're checking ovulation sticks three times a day just in case.

You keep switching supplements, protocols, practitioners because nothing feels safe or certain. You're always searching for a different thing. I always say it's not about going wider, it's about going deeper, digging deeper in, and on the surface it feels like you're being prepared, but underneath your nervous system is stuck in overdrive because

first of all, you try and do everything yourself, and then you're not trusting the process, right? That's why it's part of our Fab Fertile method. We love all the testing. We are looking at your biomarkers. It is equally as important for us to work on your mindset and reset your nervous system because you could be gluten free, kick out a parasite, but if you don't believe this is going to work, if you got a second guess, check, over research.

Do all the work yourself. How is your body ever going to know it's safe? To bring in a baby. And so how it's going to impact fertility is that's just going to have you in chronic stress mode. Your cortisol is overloaded. Your brain perceives you are in constant danger. Even if the threat is I'm running outta time.

I feel so worried. I've got to control this. It keeps your cortisol high and high cortisol is going to disrupt your HPO axis.. The hormone feedback loop between the brain and the ovaries, it's going to suppress your ovulation. It's going to lower progesterone, it's going to impact your thyroid function.

And it's going to impact AMH and ovarian reserve. AMH is just not about numbers. It's about how your body is functioning. We always say we don't hang our hat on the AMH. People get that number, feel so worried and gets into their subconscious that, there's nothing they can do.

We've helped people, get pregnant naturally with an AMH of 0.02. And never want to sugarcoat a low AMH. But the AMH is not the be all on end all we have got to dig deeper of why it is off and that chronic stress can lead to inflammation, oxidative damage, and can accelerate follicle loss.

And so then your cycles become irregular anovulatory even with an okay AMH. And then your egg quality and mitochondria health. Eggs need stable energy to mature properly, and this energy comes through mitochondria. If you're in this hyper vigilance, your nervous system is on high alert, more stress, less mitochondrial efficiency.

The results, the eggs may not fertilize. They may not implant or divide properly. People that we work with, they're high achievers, they are researchers. That's probably why you're listening to this podcast. They are taking their health into their own hands and being their own advocate.

But we need to identify that if you keep going, you're so exhausted, you can't stop . You're trying so hard, but you feel like you're getting nowhere. You become disconnected from your body. Everything feels clinical. You're tracking, you're forcing everything.

And so this can be very common to feel this way. So it's to acknowledge, this is where you are right now. And to be able to have someone call you out on , oh, there I go again. In times of stress, in times of the unknown, I'm going to go into my over researching.

Not trusting, worrying. And really all this is rooted in fear. That's not going to work. It's a pattern that we see a lot of times with the couples in our Fab Fertile program. And so it's completely normal to feel this way. So how do we shift this to get into more of a calming

side of things. Because you want to feel calm. You're probably already trying affirmations and things to help here. But how do we shift? And so we start with the body, not the brain. So that gentle breath work, that 4, 7, 8, breathing, you breathe in for four, hold for seven, and out for eight.

So breathe in for four, hold for seven,

and then out for eight.

You can do that throughout the day. You can do some different poses here, even legs up the wall where you lie on your back with your legs extended vertically against a wall. It's going to allow the blood flow to return to the heart and it activates your parasympathetic nervous system and promotes calm.

You can do that before bed. The butterfly pose where you lie on your back, you bring the soles of your feet together and you let your knees fall open. It opens your hips and your pelvis. So key areas where that emotional tension is stored. You can do a bridge pose, you can do these before bed, but lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat.

Lift your hips and hold gently. You can get a little block there and put a block underneath it, or some books, and hold it up. So it's more of a passive pose. If you want to do it without the block, if you're doing it that way it's going to fatigue your leg muscles.

And you might have a little bit of gentle tremors. This is your body releasing tension. And so you want to be able to name this when it comes up. Okay, that's interesting here's the hyper vigilance. And so you can name it. And then just get curious about it. Why is it showing up?

Have some compassion, because it's probably been your superpower, right? You'll probably get it done. You're researching, you are trying to find the answer. You're probably the only one that can do it. I feel like that. I'm like, why? Why is it only me? Why do I have to do everything? And it doesn't mean we need to do everything.

If I don't do it, it won't get done. How true is that? Sometimes, potentially. But how is that impacting me where i'm constantly researching and checking things out and not trusting the process. So I'm part of that. I will trust a process, but I do want to research my way into something and it can be exhausting.

So the fear behind this is we're running outta time and our eggs are too old, we're too old, we're broken. The doctor tells us the AMH is too low. And then that keeps us caught up in that place where the nervous system needs to be reset. So each day we start making some of these changes. The first thing is to identify that you're even doing it.

We don't even know, right? This could just be how you are. And so things that can support the nervous system is magnesium glycinate. This is one of our foundational supplements that in our Fab Fertile Method l-theanine you can use some adaptogens. So a cortisol manager, ashwagandha, Rhodiola. Be able to see if those are right for you.

But supplements alone cannot override a dysregulated system. You've got to make the targeted diet lifestyle changes along with some of these supplements. And so many times people with hypervigilance, they're going to find stillness uncomfortable. They're like, I want you to do the Shavasana pose, corpse pose in yoga.

Lie there, not do anything. Or I want you to slow yoga or even sitting without doing anything. It could be uncomfortable. That's the point. So we'll start with just five minutes a day. No phone. No tracking, just be present when you eat your meal. We don't need to look at something or do something else.

Just eat your meal. And actually I am talking to myself right now because , looking at the phone while I'm eating. If my husband's not around, if he's here then we we'll eat together. But it's to chew your food because we could be gulping it down and it's impacting our digestion.

Years ago I studied macrobiotics where we had to chewing like a hundred times each bite, that was a little hardcore, but even chewing one bite 10 times. To see how much longer it'll take for you to actually eat and digest and enjoy. Yeah, so five minutes a day, no phone, no tracking, and just be present.

The goal is to teach your body that you're safe. Even when you're not doing, especially if you're a doer, if you're a doer, right? This can be like, I need to be efficient. I want to keep doing, what do you mean? I'm just sitting here? That is part of it. Like the resting is doing that, is getting your body ready for your baby.

And this is really important for your, egg quality and, IVF success. So if your reproductive system needs to feel safe to function. Egg quality doesn't only depend on what you eat or the supplements you take, it's all about your nervous system. If your body thinks you're in danger, it is trying to protect you and it'll shut down fertility.

I see so many people they've done so much on this and we need to be able to keep going, but let go surrender so your body knows it's okay. Our whole thesis on this. Is it actually early menopause or is it your adrenals?

that impact your thyroid, impacts your AMH and your FSH and your follicle count? And many people that have come to us after years of trying, tracking, doing all the supplements, failed IVFs and we started doing all these changes with their diet, with their lifestyle, the food sensitivities, the blood sugar balance, balancing the thyroid.

And then I'm just thinking of one right now where she had POI in her AMH was at 0.04. She was young 27, but she was told donor eggs were her only option. And then within five months she was pregnant naturally. Being told your AMH is that low.

We've got people, in their late thirties and their early forties with POI and being able to, get pregnant naturally. And so I don't want to sugarcoat that one. It can be a tough one, right? But if it's worked for them, there's things that you can do. So she regulated her nervous system.

She worked on food sensitivities, she had blood sugar issues, thyroid nutrient deficiencies. She was pregnant naturally within four months. Her average success is 12 to 18 months, so that hers is obviously faster. And she went to see her REI at the four month mark. And he's wow, your follicles, everything's looking really good here.

We should do a IVF. She's hold on. And she was pregnant naturally the next month. So it's the power of looking at all of this, especially if you're with a functional doc right now and they don't specialize in fertility. At least they're better than a conventional doctor. But they're they don't understand the it's not just about the gut and the food sensitivities.

We need to work on the mindset side of things. There's specific themes that we see with people that are on the fertility journey. And it's not just about the testing. Testing is great. People aren't even doing the testing. We're not even looking at the vaginal microbiome.

They aren't looking at the stool test. We need to do all of that, but it's equally as important with us recognizing how you're feeling because the fertility journey will impact every aspect of your life. The people that haven't been through it, they do not understand. And they don't understand and we're looking for empathy from someone that just doesn't really know how difficult this can be.

And sometimes we're not even sharing, right? So even getting that burden off of you can be helpful. Then deepening the connection with your partner is key. And so the hyper vigilance is not a flaw. It was developed to protect you. It's not bad, it's just outdated. And so that constant scanning, organizing, managing, those are your skills.

But they don't belong on your fertility journey. And you need to redirect them. Use that same energy to nourish your body, support your nervous system, build calm, and know that your body wants to procreate. The majority of us can get pregnant naturally. IVF can be there for you, but you need to bring it in when you're looking at your biomarkers and looking at your testing and see that you've reset your nervous system before you go marching ahead with that.

If you wanted to book a call, we can talk about some strategies to help improve the chances of getting pregnant naturally, or improve the chances of a successful IVF transfer, successful IVF retrieval. Send me a message at hello@fabfertile.ca  subject line FERTILE and we can give options to help. Take care.