Join us for this holiday edition of Fertility Docs Uncensored: Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center, and Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center discuss questions they get at holiday parties as they mingle and jingle with friends and family. They discuss provocative holiday party questions: Does position matter? Do we need to have sex every day to get pregnant? Not exactly, but there are details you may want to hear. What kind of lubricant should we use? You may laugh at this answer. Should my partner switch to boxers from briefs? Hopefully, this doesn’t mess up your choice of gifts for your male partner. The docs also get questions that are less uncensored about stress and reproduction and the impact of past birth control use on fertility. You will not want to miss this informative and entertaining episode as you head over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house for your holiday celebration.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Theralogix.
Episode Transcript:
Susan Hudson (00:01)
You’re listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you’re struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Susan Hudson (00:24)
Theralogix reproductive health supplements are formulated for both women and men. These products are designed by doctors and backed by science and are recommended by the majority of IVF health clinics in the US. Theralogix fertility supplements are independently tested and certified by NSF International to ensure content purity, accuracy and safety. If you’re ready to start your family, Theralogix has you covered every step of the way.
Abby Eblen MD (00:50)
Hi everyone, we’re back with another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I’m one of your hosts, Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center. And today I am joined by my fun, fabulous, feisty co-host, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center.
Susan Hudson MD (01:04)
Hello everyone.
Abby Eblen MD (01:06)
and Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:09)
Hi. How’s it?
Abby Eblen MD (01:11)
Hey, Well, here we are almost, can you believe it, at the end of the year. Christmas time, we were just chatting about our decorations. So tell us about your decorations, Carrie.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:22)
Christmas has vomited all over my house.
Abby Eblen MD (01:24)
Hahaha
Carrie Bedient MD (01:26)
That is my husband’s description every year. And every year he is 100 % correct. I have more boxes of Christmas stuff than you can shake a stick at. In the outside, the theme is candy land. I have lots of candy canes and lollipops and peppermint swirls and I have gumdrops. I have hard candies hanging everywhere. I have gingerbread man. I have everything.
Abby Eblen MD (01:52)
You’re hardcore when you have a theme, Carrie.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:54)
Yeah, I have themes for both Halloween and Christmas and Candyland has been being built the last couple years and so this year I I finally hit the sweet spot of I have the stuff, it’s all kind of uniformly across the yard. This year I did it so I don’t have to get on a ladder at any point except for one very extraordinarily stable location where I am at a low risk of falling off because that is my husband’s other fear that Christmas will vomit all over the house and it will spit me out in the process. Yeah, we know too many ED docs who swear against ladders at the holidays. I only put it in a place where I’m highly unlikely to break every bone, just maybe one or two. So that’s my side.
Abby Eblen MD (02:25)
Yeah, that wouldn’t be good.
What about you, How about you, Susan? Has Christmas vomited on your house?
Susan Hudson MD (02:43)
I’d say our Christmas decorating is a lot more controlled. We have lights in our house and we have some of those blow up things in our front yard that are really easy to put out and then of course we have our Christmas tree and stuff in the living room where everybody congregates and that type of thing but probably not to the extent as Carrie’s house.
Carrie Bedient MD (02:47)
Mine’s totally controlled!
What about you, Abby? Where are you in the stage of Christmas illness?
Abby Eblen MD (03:15)
We’re pretty low key. We’ll do a couple of wreaths on the house. My husband will climb the ladder, and I’m always worried he’s gonna fall off and break his neck. We usually don’t do very much. And every year for about the last three years, and it’s kind of like something that’s like spreading, not like a virus, that’s the wrong analogy, but more and more people are hiring people around to do their decoration and stuff.
Early on, even before Thanksgiving, my husband called some people and he’s like, let’s just get a quote, see how expensive it would be. I don’t know, I don’t want to do this. But he’s been begging. So finally, finally I broke down, okay, let’s do it. Five days after we said yes, 10 people showed up in our front yard and we’re putting lights on. And I mean, we were the house in the neighborhood. No one else had decorated their house. And we were the house in the neighborhood that had lights and Christmas trees and everything decorated.
So, I think by the time Christmas is over, I’m gonna be ready for the decorations to be gone. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked them. I have liked them, but it’s just been a lot.
Susan Hudson MD (04:11)
People nowadays are doing those lights that they leave up all year long but they can change the color their LED lights they can change their colors depending on the holiday that’s kind of a cool concept.
Carrie Bedient MD (04:24)
One of my neighbors has an LED setup that looks like those icicle lights, only you can change the color. They do like orange and purple for Halloween, and then the red and blue for Christmas, and then like blue and white for New Year’s. And they change pretty regularly. So I kind of like that one, but yeah.
Abby Eblen MD (04:22)
Well, very good. So today we’re gonna kind of turn the tables. Normally we get listener questions and this time we’re gonna actually kind of participate. We’re gonna give doctor questions and these are questions, if you’re on your way to your in-law’s house right now and you’re listening to us, these are the questions that we get when we go to Christmas parties. So, Susan, you wanna start out with a common question that you get when you mention kind of what your occupation is at a Christmas party or gathering?
Susan Hudson MD (05:05)
Yes, so one thing that people come up and ask me randomly is, is being on birth control going to keep me from getting pregnant when we’re trying to get pregnant? Which is a great question.
Carrie Bedient MD (05:17)
Wait, so you’re not saying taking birth control while you’re actively trying to get pregnant? You mean just a history of birth control while like now you want to get pregnant. So you’ve presumably stopped because we have yet to have a question from at least our listeners that have said, can I get pregnant while taking birth control?
Susan Hudson MD (05:38)
We’ve all had somebody show up as a new patient either on birth control pills or on continuous progesterone only pills and can’t figure out why they haven’t gotten pregnant. You have to admit that has happened.
Abby Eblen MD (05:42)
Yes. Absolutely. And every now and then I’ve had a patient with a lot, at least twice, I’ve had a patient with an IUD that they thought had fallen out and their period was wonky and it really hadn’t fallen out. It really had perforated. They still had it they didn’t know it.
Carrie Bedient MD (05:50)
There’s the urban legend of the babies that come out holding the IUD. I have yet to see, I’ve yet to talk to anyone who’s reliable enough that I actually believe it. But I do like the thought of doing a C-section and the kid comes out holding the IUD.
Susan Hudson MD (06:17)
When I was in residency, we had babies that were conceived while an IUD was in place and they decided to keep the IUD in and then it came out with the placenta and everything like that. Not necessarily grasping the IUD, but back to the question. So I would say it depends on the type of birth control pills or birth control that you were previously using. So if you were using things like birth control pills, patches, rings, or using something like an IUD or an Implanon or Nexplanon that was inserted into your arm, once you have either stopped those medications or have had those removed, they should not have a lasting impact on your fertility. That is not the case for DepoProvera. If you have used DepoProvera, that medicine can affect your fertility up to a year after your last injection. So it’s something important to keep in mind.
Carrie Bedient MD (07:20)
The other thing that people need to be aware of is that if you opt for tying your tubes or a vasectomy, those are permanent methods of birth control. And yes, sometimes they can be reversed, but never ever go into that with the intent of, I’m gonna get this reversed later if I want another child because a lot of the time now for tubal ligations where they block the tubes, they’re doing what’s called a salpinjectomy where they take the whole tube out and that decreases your risk of ovarian cancer which is why people do it. And presumably if you’re deciding to block your tubes that is a final game over for natural fertility kind of decision but it means that if you are doing any of those things you need to assume that this is a permanent no reversal kind of situation.
With the knowledge of if you do want a child, it’s very heavily gonna skew towards IVF because, well, yes, in some cases you can reverse and reopen those tubes, whether it’s a vasectomy or a tubal ligation. Do not rely on that because the number of surgeons who do that is rapidly decreasing as IVF gets better and better. And it also oftentimes puts you at much greater risk for big, bad, and ugly things, especially the women. And so we don’t wanna go there because nobody wants the phone call of, hey, I just got a positive pregnancy test and I’m having pain and we’re bleeding. And then you find out you’ve got an ectopic or tubal pregnancy going on.
Abby Eblen MD (08:48)
Well, plus it’s expensive and there’s even less guarantee than there is with IVF too. So that would be the other reason why you wouldn’t want to rely on that. Okay, Carrie, what about you? What burning question you get at holiday parties?
Carrie Bedient MD (09:00)
Okay, so my burning question is if I take a vacation, will this just happen? Am I just too stressed? Am I working too hard? Do I need to change jobs? All along the theme of stress. And the answer to that is if you could just take a vacation and get pregnant, all of us would be out of a job. Or at least not nearly as busy as we are. Relatives who suggest that, friends who suggest that are very well meaning. But no, it doesn’t really work like that. A lot of the times there is some physical impediment. Stress by itself, there’s layers of it. So When we think of stress, we are not just thinking about your boss yelled at you and you had a really crappy day at work. We are thinking of physiologic stress, meaning you’re anorexic and you’re not getting enough calories in your body in order to barely support your body much less reproduction. Or we’re thinking about a medical stress like you have cancer or you have an autoimmune condition or you have a transplant and whatever is going on, your body is devoting all of its energy and resources to combating that. That is a different type of stress. That very much can impact fertility. But when you’re talking about More along the things of, know, is my boss yelling at me? I had an argument with my husband. I don’t have any time to myself. Usually those things are not going to have a huge impact on your capacity to get pregnant or not. What do you guys think?
Susan Hudson MD (10:31)
I always tell patients that there’s actually relatively good evidence that what I call good old chronic American everyday stress doesn’t actually impact fertility. I’m more a believer, as you said, those kind of physiologic stresses, people who have eating disorders, extreme athletes, people with other major chronic medical conditions, those types of things, or some type of very, very acute gigantic stress.
Abby Eblen MD (10:41)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, death of a spouse, death of family.
Carrie Bedient MD (11:04)
Moving across country and losing all of your support systems, those types of things.
Susan Hudson MD (11:09)
Yes, yes. Those types of things, think there definitely is some weight to, but the stress that unfortunately most of us feel every day probably doesn’t have as big of an impact. And so don’t stress about being stressed.
Abby Eblen MD (11:14)
Okay.
And I would agree with that. I agree with that. know, even sometimes just to add to that, sometimes even positive stress can be a problem too. I had a patient one time who had moved to Nashville recently. She’d just graduated from college. She was starting her job. They just bought a house. They’d got married six months earlier. And it’s like, when did all this start? Well, about six months ago, right before I got married and moved. Then she’s like, yeah, I kind of see the correlation there.
Carrie Bedient MD (11:23)
What about you, Abby? What do you…
Abby Eblen MD (11:47)
Even positive stress is considered a stress and can delay your cycle and make you have irregular menses. My question is, how often do I need to have sex to get pregnant? Do I need to have sex every day? And the answer really is no, you don’t need to have sex every day. It’s better to have more sperm there every other day than a little bit of sperm every day. And there’s actually been some studies that have shown that, this is not common, but if you’ve had sex even five days before potentially the egg ovulates, you can get pregnant, but it’s more likely within a two to three day window. And we know that the egg, once it releases, it only is good for about 24 hours. So if you know you’re ovulating, that’s the only time that you might wanna have it a little bit more frequent. But generally we say if you have pretty regular cycles, you know when you’re ovulating sex every other day around day 13, day 15, day 17 is the most optimal time to try and conceive.
Carrie Bedient MD (12:39)
The Vegas twist on that question. There’s a twist to the right and a twist to the left. So one direction of the twist is how many times a day do I have to have sex? Not every day, do I need to be twice or three times or four times? Do I need to go home on my lunch break? That’s one direction of the twist. And then the other direction of the twist is do you have to be standing on your head afterwards? Or what happens when you stand up and you feel that little bit of liquid coming out? How does how does that impact it? Which that liquid is not supposed to go inside your uterus. Gravity works, it will come out. And that’s all fine. and then the third twist.
Abby Eblen MD (13:18)
So wait, you didn’t answer the position question.
Carrie Bedient MD (13:21)
No, it doesn’t matter. The sperm ends up where it needs to be regardless of what position you are in. And I will assume that, at least for this episode, it might be maybe a little family friendly. Who knows where you’re listening to this? So we’re not going to go into those details because we’re uncensored, but it’s Christmas. We’ll cut you a break at your mother-in-law’s house. The position really should not matter a whole heck of a lot.
Abby Eblen MD (13:23)
Hahaha!
Carrie Bedient MD (13:49)
Sadly, the third twist on this question is do you have to have an orgasm to get pregnant? And he does, she doesn’t, which is, it’s very sad. I feel like there was a flaw in the design of that. It’s, You need the orgasm for the male because that’s what gets the sperm out into the world for the female. She can have not so much.
Abby Eblen MD (14:07)
Not so much.
Susan Hudson MD (14:10)
Going off of that, another thing that we’re sometimes asked is things about lubricants and is saliva okay? Is coconut oil okay? Is blank, fill in the blank. Is it okay? And generally what we recommend is saliva is not great. Realize saliva is the beginning of your digestive tract. And so it has enzymes meant to break things down. So not a good thing for sperm. And if you do need lubrication, either using something that is designed like Pre-seed to not interfere with sperm function or canola oil appears to be relatively safe. I don’t think that there’s really good studies looking at other types of cooking type oils.
Although I know a lot of people use coconut oil nowadays, I don’t think that there’s really good studies to say if it’s spermicidal or safe for sperm.
Abby Eblen MD (15:07)
But there’s probably not really good studies about sperm, spermicides and vegetable oil either.
Susan Hudson MD (15:13)
I think there are some studies looking at canola oil, specifically canola oil. Yes, Carrie?
Carrie Bedient MD (15:19)
Do you guys know the origin of why it’s called canola oil?
Susan Hudson MD (15:22)
No, why?
Carrie Bedient MD (15:24)
Because canola oil is actually rapeseed oil, but rapeseed oil has a very terrible connotation with the name. So as it was established in Canada, Canada, it’s Canadian oil, hence canola oil.
Abby Eblen MD (15:33)
Well, thank you for that interesting piece of information. Maybe I can use that in Trivial Pursuit sometime.
Carrie Bedient MD (15:46)
Thank you.
Abby Eblen MD (15:47)
All right, Carrie, so you’re up next. What’s your next question that you get?
Carrie Bedient MD (15:51)
Next question I get is a variation on what foods should I start to eat essentially excessive amounts of. And the two that I hear most frequently are pineapple and McDonald’s fries. And most of time this comes before transfers. The theory behind the pineapple is that it’s got high levels of the enzyme bromelain in it that breaks down barriers. The thought is if you eat it, will break down the uterine lining such that the embryo can actually implant. Nobody has actually proven that in any way, shape or form. Nobody’s going to object to you eating pineapple, although if you eat too much of it, your mouth gets that weird raw feeling because it’s kind of like everything has broken down inside of it.
Abby Eblen MD (16:20)
Hmm, that’s faulty thinking
Carrie Bedient MD (16:37)
The other one is the McDonald’s fries. Other than they may give you a quick dopamine hit, but only if you’re eating them hot and fresh because if you if you let McDonald’s fries or any other fast food fries get cold, they turn to cardboard and subsequently in your stomach. And that’s probably not a good feeling. There’s no foods that we know you should definitively eat as you’re going through this process. Do you guys hear about any other specifics besides those two?
Susan Hudson MD (17:06)
I would say that if you’re looking for a general diet to follow, not necessarily a specific food that’s going to be key to your fertility, following a Mediterranean style diet is probably the best choice for most people. Nothing’s going to be a perfect fit for everyone, but a Mediterranean style diet is definitely going to get you on the right path.
Abby Eblen MD (17:12)
Lots of healthy fats and fruits and vegetables and things like that. So age old question that we get, I don’t know how many times at Christmas parties and other places, should my partner wear boxers or briefs? There really is some validity to it because, with women, we have our ovaries, our gonads inside our body. It’s a nice, temperature controlled environment. It doesn’t change too much.
Carrie Bedient MD (17:33)
All right, Abby, what you got?
Abby Eblen MD (17:53)
Whereas, unfortunately for men, their gonads, their testes are really more on the outside. So they’re more subject to significant changes in the environment, like heat if they work in a hot environment, if your partner uses a sauna, in a hot tub, puts a computer on his lap. Anything that heats the testes can kill the sperm and it can decrease motility. The other thing potentially that can cause issues that doesn’t really have anything to do with boxers or briefs is if he has a varicocele, which also can heat the testes as well.
But the idea with boxers versus briefs is boxers are more loose and flowy and therefore the testes are not clamped so tightly to the rest of the body and heated because in that situation, if you have really tight briefs on, that can cause issues with the testes being really close to the body and even just a small increase in temperature can change the temperature of the sperm and can kill the sperm. And so that does have some validity, it also depends on if he’s wearing really tight pants that hold his gonads really close, his testes really close to his body, that can make a difference as well. So what are your thoughts? Anything else?
Susan Hudson MD (18:55)
I don’t really have any more comments on boxers versus briefs. I mean realistically, if you have a normal semen analysis, it probably doesn’t matter, okay? But if you do have a poor semen analysis, it is something that you can do that might have some influence and we only need one good one.
Carrie Bedient MD (18:56)
Mm-hmm. The other thing is that for us on the receiving end of that question, there’s nothing like meeting the asker of this question first, getting the boxers or briefs, and usually a whole detailed analysis of what their partner’s underwear drawer looks like. And then 20 minutes later, you meet the partner, and the only thing that can pop up in your mind is, I know he has red devil Valentine’s underwear that he may or may not be wearing right now.
It’s very difficult, I think, at this point to throw any of us, especially with those types of questions that we get in the real world. But it does add some color commentary within our own brains when we meet people, which is, it’s entertaining for me. I don’t know about you guys, but it always keeps me, yeah.
Susan Hudson MD (20:02)
It can be. It can be.
Abby Eblen MD (20:05)
All right, any other burning questions that you get that we’ve not covered so far?
Susan Hudson MD (20:09)
I’ve got one. So you always meet the person who’s like, so you’re a fertility doctor. How much is this fertility stuff is real? You have blank celebrity, blank celebrity, blank celebrity, all getting pregnant in their late forties, fifties. Like, come on, you know, this is, this is just a scam.
Well, people say these things and it’s true. And so the reality is the biological clock is real. The biological clock is real for both men and women. It is more in celebrities, okay? So the thing is, is just like everything else in the media, there is three sides of the story, this side, that side, and what actually happened, okay? And so realize that yes, a beautiful baby has been born. How exactly that baby came into existence? You do not have all the details. And so when it comes to women, the biological clock is very real. We definitely start seeing decreases in fertility in the mid 30s, which escalates in the upper 30s and early 40s. And the ability to conceive once you’re in your mid 40s becomes almost zero.
Guys, their biological clock is extended. We’ve all heard about some 60, 70, 80 year old man who’s fathered children, but those sperm are not as good as younger sperm. We definitely know that there are some things that can be increased risks when the source of the sperm is from a man who is older, especially in his upper 40s, 50s, 60s, et cetera. Things like, autism, increased risk of schizophrenia, those types of things. It doesn’t mean it will happen. It just means that you’re at an increased risk as compared to if you use sperm from a younger individual. So these are things to be aware of. And yes, the biological clock is very, very real.
Abby Eblen MD (22:13)
Yeah, and a 45 year old man has a much better shot at fathering a pregnancy with a younger woman than a 45 year old woman has with a younger man, unfortunately, just not fair.
Carrie Bedient MD (22:23)
And there’s the variation on that, which is someone who says, well, my mother, my grandmother, all the women in my family have babies deep into their 40s, therefore I’m going to be fine. And it goes back to one, you don’t know how they got pregnant. Although to be fair, you’re talking about a grandmother, there wasn’t any technology available. But just because it happened to them doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you. Some of the patients that I’ve had who have been most most upset are ones where everybody else in their family is conceived at these late ages and easily and they cannot even though they’re they’re younger at that point in time. And so just because it happened to your family doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you. And similarly, there are stories where my best friend conceived when she was 45 and I know she didn’t have anything. And that absolutely can be true. People can get pregnant at those ages just the same way that I can win the lottery.
It’s not as likely and you’re not gonna bet something really important on it, but it absolutely can happen. And none of us are denying that. We’re just saying for something that’s so important that you really, really want, it’s very helpful to take more definitive measures to get it rather than just rely on, am I gonna win the lottery or not? Especially which is what you’re kinda talking about when you’re conceiving, trying to use your own eggs after 44, 45.
Abby Eblen MD (23:45)
Well, another version of that question along the same lines is people come up making cocktail party talk like, well, so why do you think women have so much trouble getting pregnant now as opposed to a long time ago? To that end, age is a big factor because women are just waiting longer to have children. Certainly like Carrie said, sometimes I think there is some genetic parts involved. If your mom had a child at an older age, you’re potentially more likely, but there’s other factors. There’s the male factor, there’s maybe your mom didn’t have endometriosis and you do, and there’s a lot of other things than just egg number and egg quality that make a difference that can make it harder for somebody to get pregnant. And older you are, probably the more exposure you have to STDs, sexually transmitted diseases that can damage your tubes, more chances you have of having a uterine abnormality like fibroids and things like that that can cause problems as well. The longer you wait, it’s almost snowballs. There’s not just the genetic component and the number of eggs, but there’s lots of other things that can play a role.
Carrie Bedient MD (24:41)
Absolutely. Another question that I hear about is, it’s legal, so I can do it while I’m pregnant, right? So just because alcohol, nicotine products, marijuana in many states, just because they’re legal, doesn’t mean that they are safe for you. And especially not in pregnancy. And for alcohol, that’s pretty well proven. For nicotine, that’s really well proven.
Marijuana data is still coming in. There’s, getting to be more and more studies now that it’s legal in so many more places.
Susan Hudson MD (25:14)
The things that they’re finding is it’s not a positive impact.
Carrie Bedient MD (25:18)
Yes.
Abby Eblen MD (25:18)
Well, one thing I would say, even for many, many years when I started out in fellowship, I remember hearing that pot smokers typically have, men tend to have abnormally shaped sperm, abnormal morphology. And I’ve seen that over and over again. If you smoke pot as a guy, for whatever reason, it can definitely make your sperm misshapen, which may make it harder for the sperm to fertilize.
Susan Hudson MD (25:41)
Along that same line of thinking. When we’re looking at herbals, just because it’s a vitamin or supplement does not mean it’s safe during pregnancy. Just because you bought it at a health food store does not mean that it’s okay. If you’re a person who tends to have a very large vitamin armamentarium, please review those with your physician to make sure that they aren’t potentially harmful.
Abby Eblen MD (26:09)
I just had somebody earlier this week who was trying to get pregnant and she was on something called Testaplex and I’m like, hmm, that sounds suspiciously like testosterone. So I looked it up and it is a supplement and I don’t know how much testosterone it actually has in it, but she was like, but my nutritionist prescribed it and you mean it, it’s just a supplement, it’s not a prescription drug and I’m like, well doesn’t really matter if it’s a supplement or a prescription drug, if it’s got some version of testosterone in it, you can’t use it when you’re pregnant trying to get pregnant. So that’s a great point.
Carrie Bedient MD (26:42)
Yes. There is a bunch of questions about, what if I’m just using CBD oil instead of smoking THC or taking in the gummies or things like that? And that has, I think, even less information about it. And one thing to think about, whenever you are using those and using them regularly, the question is, why are you using them regularly? And for some people, it’s just pure enjoyment. They really like whatever it is, for a lot of people, it’s that combined with it is treating an underlying medical condition, whether that’s anxiety, insomnia, whatever. And that happens to work well for it, but it may not be helping you in your quest to get pregnant. And so just like if someone has lupus or a high blood pressure or diabetes, there are meds that were okay with them being on in pregnancy. There are meds that are really much riskier in pregnancy, the same thing can apply. So maybe you’ve got anxiety where most of the time, marijuana before bed helps you go to sleep. Well, maybe that’s not a great idea while you’re trying to get pregnant and some of these other medications may be better studied and a little safer for you during that timeframe.
Abby Eblen MD (27:52)
Yeah, and one other just to throw out there that I see a lot of people on is Adderall, and that’s for ADHD, It’s basically a stimulant, and you can get addicted. You develop a tolerance to it, and your baby can develop a tolerance to it as well, but it’s kind of like anything, and this is a conversation to have with your OBGYN or with your fertility doctor. You’ve got to look at risk and benefits, and if you’re not on the medicine and you’re really not very focused and you’re driving and you lose focus and you have a car accident, obviously we don’t want that to happen either. So you have to look at the risk and benefits of those types of drugs. But certainly if you’re on any drug outside of just prenatal vitamins, it’s certainly not a bad idea to talk to your doctor about those and what impact they may have on fertility because sometimes they won’t bring it up because they don’t realize you’re trying to get pregnant. So they may put you on something that we know is not good for pregnancy and you think they understand that you’re trying to get pregnant, but they don’t. Make sure everybody you’re upfront and open about that when you see your doctor.
Carrie Bedient MD (28:47)
I had a patient just recently who was asking me about the antidepressants because an anti-anxiety meds and she was, she said, I am just a ball of nerves and I can’t concentrate at work. And she’s been off of all of her meds for quite some time. And she was extraordinarily anxious because she had been talking to people, some of whom have no medical qualifications, others of whom do, where it’s a psychiatrist, psychologist, a primary care doc. And sometimes it’s really helpful to get multiple points of view on this because where one type of physician may say, you’re trying to get pregnant. Well, we need to get you off of everything. The fertility doc or the OB doc may be no, because you, if you have untreated depression, like that is a risk factor by itself. Like forget the meds.
Abby Eblen MD (29:29)
Please.
Carrie Bedient MD (29:35)
That is a risk factor for quite a few complications. And so no, I would rather have you on that med with a very short list of complications as opposed to all of the things that can come down the line from having an untreated mental health condition. And so the look of relief on this poor woman’s face, when we went through that, I mean, she looked so happy. Her husband looked very relieved because they had really been struggling when in that case, there wasn’t a whole lot of need to do that because the meds she was going to be prescribed were really well known and been around for a long time.
Abby Eblen MD (30:11)
All right, well, this has been a great episode and we just wish everybody happy holidays and we look forward to 2025 with you as our listener. We appreciate you spending your time with us. So to our audience, thanks for listening. Subscribe to Apple Podcast to have next Tuesday’s episode pop up automatically for you and be sure to subscribe to YouTube. That really helps us spread reliable information to all of our listeners and we appreciate having you as our listeners. So we’ll see you next year.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:41)
Visit fertilitydocsuncensored.com to submit specific questions you have and sign up for our email list.
Susan Hudson MD (30:46)
As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and is not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. Subscribe, sign up for emails, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Carrie Bedient MD (30:55)
Bye!
Abby Eblen MD (30:56)
Bye.
Susan Hudson (31:00)
Millions of women worldwide swear by Ovasitol, the number one inositol supplement by Theralogix for balancing hormone levels. Theralogix also offers a wide range of evidence-based fertility supplements for men and women trusted by the top fertility clinics across the country. All Theralogix products are independently tested and certified for content accuracy, purity, and freedom from contaminants. Theralogix, supplements from science.