Gut Health, Toxins, and the Fertility Puzzle with Macy Coleman, RDN – Transcript

00:00So, uh, heavy metals and miccotoxins are some of the biggest that I see that pop up that make a huge difference and also are the most impactful when it comes to symptoms a client that is experiencing.

00:13You can see it pretty quickly with people that have a lot of high heavy metals or high micotoxin exposures. They are the ones that it's a big needle mover once we address those. Hello and welcome back to the Vibrant Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Dr.

00:33Emmy. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Macy Coleman. Macy is a boardcertified registered dietician, nutritionist, and women's health, hormone, and fertility afficionado. She's the founder of WellWoman Nutrition, a virtual practice rooted in functional and integrative nutrition practices that focuses on full mind and body wellness. Having struggled with hormonal issues of her own, she eventually realized that what was

01:00happening to her was actually happening for her. After all, what better way to walk another woman through her journey than to walk with her. I can't wait to learn more about Macy's personal health journey and unravel the hidden causes of infertility in today's episode. Macy, thank you so much for being here.

01:17>> Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this topic to dive into. Me, too. And before we do that, I would really love to touch on your personal health journey um and how this led you to the work that you're doing today.

01:31>> Yeah, absolutely. So, my own health journey really began like in college, high school, college. I was navigating a long list of chronic symptoms, mostly digestive, but definitely some hormone imbalances along for the ride. And really, no one seemed to look deeper into it. I found myself like in and out of ERS all the time. I was just mostly collecting longer lists of diagnosis and

01:58more prescriptions and just not getting any closer to healing and just they kept telling me things were normal or common for someone your age, right? Like, oh, you you know, you don't need a gallbladder and while we're in there, we'll take out your appendix even though you just have stomach aches and there's nothing wrong with it. you know, a lot of people your age have that issue. But I knew deep down, you know, nothing about how I felt was normal. So, I just became really determined to find better

02:24answers. And that's when I discovered functional medicine, not only as a patient, but then eventually as a practitioner. Really just started learning everything I possibly could, reading loads of books, um, listening to podcasts and experiencing, um, things myself. So I started actually experimenting on myself and taking advantage of training. I sought mentorship from some of the best minds

02:50in the space. Really what started as kind of personal desperation turned into professional purpose which I know is a lot of people's story that hang out in this functional realm. So today I get to lead a really great thriving practice that's now helped thousands of women just really reclaim their health. And especially now that I focus on fertility, I'm able to help bring miracle babies into the world. And that's really the most fulfilling work

03:16I've ever done. Uh, of course, second only to being a parent myself. But again, if as you mentioned earlier, a uh what greater way to walk someone through a journey is is walk beside them and have a lot of similar shared experiences.

03:35>> Absolutely. And I'm curious, Macy, were you interested in health and wellness prior to your own personal experiences? >> Yeah, I remember. >> Is that was that the plan all along? >> No, kind of. I was in high school and I'm from a super super small town, like 800 people. So, the only jobs we knew about was like you're a farmer or you're a police officer or you're a teacher or

03:59a doctor. And I was reading a health and fitness magazine one day and I saw them call out a dietitian and kind of explain what that job was. And I was like, I did not know like focusing on healthy food would be a job. And I was talking to my mom about it and she's like, I think I know someone who is a dietitian who's a family friend. So that got me connected and yeah, that was like I was probably like a freshman in high school. So I did

04:26know that I wanted to be a dietitian. But as you are probably familiar with, there's a lot of different types of dietitians and there's definitely some conventionalbased dieticians. I started out in clinical uh and that's what I thought I loved, but it did take me time and experience to kind of niche down into functional medicine and definitely into women's health, but health in general was always the plan.

04:50Right. Okay. Got it. Yeah. sometimes we see these huge pivots for professional goals and um but this is something you were always interested in but then you were really focused on fertility as you mentioned so how did that come about?

05:03Yeah. So, interestingly enough, um like niching down into what I found, uh most fulfilling became fertility and be helping women because really my mission and my practice is that no one who comes to me leaves feeling dismissed or without a path forward because that's how I felt in my journey. I just really try to meet all of my clients with a lot

05:30of empathy, curiosity. I think that curiosity makes the best practitioners and just like I have this relentless like drive and commitment to finding answers um for people. So part of a long- winded way to answer your question, I went through some experiences myself. I experienced a pregnancy loss. So I do understand that kind of like earthshattering, devastating grief and then really the

05:57resilience that it takes to keep going. So, it has made me a really more of a compassionate and effective partner to my client's journey to parenthood. But even in my other experiences that are non-fertility based, I just it's not a one-sizefits-all. It's not, you know, gaslighting people. It's like really understanding, getting curious about what these symptoms are, why this person's experiencing it, and and just be in the passenger seat in their

06:24journey and give them answers that they like desperately are searching for and they they truly deserve. >> I'm wondering also, do you have clients come to you and say, "I'm feeling good and maybe I haven't even started to try to conceive yet." and they want preconception care because I'm sure there's a huge overlap between uh your work that you do with clients struggling with um fertility or infertility,

06:51however you want to say it. Um you know, I like to say, you know, maybe we can focus on fertility, right? It's the kind of the glass half full, which is what I'm all about. Um but are you working with people who say like, well, I don't think I have any issues. I don't know, but I want to work on preconception care, which is just a phrase I like to throw out there because we don't talk about it enough.

07:10>> Yeah. And that's a good question. I'll be honest. Uh, I did a lot more of that at the beginning and I don't know if it's just the type of clients that I work with now and this word of mouth spreading about like who has had success working with me but I would say 90% of my case load is fertility and probably 80% of those um women are have really

07:35been around the block and have you know a lot of co-actors in this and they have been on the journey and a lot of them have been through like a lot of failed conventional fertility treatments, IVF, IUIs, maybe have been along trying to get pregnant in their journey for 10 years even. So, I see a ton of really complex cases now. I'd love to see a, you know, people that are here for preconception because it's the most impactful and so important. And I did a

08:03lot of that before, but I have created a course I'm sure we'll we'll chat a little bit about later, but that does lay the foundations and get people into that preconception health space and mindset um so that they have a good starting place so that they can check all those good foundational boxes.

08:22>> Yes, I love that. Yeah. I mean, and I think some people just don't realize that we do need to be more proactive, maybe start thinking before, um, we run into issues. But, um, on that note, if there are issues or roadblocks, I want to know, let's just jump straight into it, root causes of unexplained, um, infertility um, that you see most commonly in your practice and, um, maybe highlight a few of those that you're

08:48seeing most commonly. Yeah, I feel like the biggest ones I see stem a lot from gut health issues. So, we see a lot of like infections and inflammation from the gut. We see a ton of immune dysregulation and we know that most of the immune system lies in our gut. So, we can retrace that, you know, back to gut health. I see a lot of adrenal and hormonal dysfunction and

09:13imbalances. We see um women that are struggling with like poor blood flow, like systemic blood flow to get those good nutrients and get that good oxygen to the ovaries and to the pelvic region uh to support, you know, healthy implantation and and growth and um a healthy pregnancy. And then I also see a lot of high toxic burden. I know I feel like everyone's kind of aware of how toxic our environment is now and

09:39continues to be. So we do see quite a bit of that. And then um my other one would be probably not nourishing women that are are not nourishing their bodies properly, maybe not with enough nutrition. I find a lot of people are accidentally undereating or just struggling with like the right types and amounts of of food to to support healthy hormones, their gut health and um a pregnancy. And I want to dive into, you

10:06know, maybe a a couple of those later on, but what about any um early symptoms or patterns that um people should be paying attention to? Women in particular should be paying attention to that might hint at deeper root cause issues because I think sometimes a lot of people maybe deny GI concerns or they don't know, you know, they have a normal, they have, you know, this this is their normal, but they don't realize that there may be an issue with their normal. So what kind of

10:34like in particular for your fertility patients, what what patterns are you seeing clinically? Yeah, I that's a really good a good thing to point out is oftent times if we address using your example of the gut, if we address the gut based on the labs that we see come back, they're like I tell them these certain things can cause bloating or you know whatever symptoms are like I don't experience that and then we treat it and they're like wait I've been bloated for 20 years of my life and didn't realize

11:01it like that's gone away like that's you know that's crazy for so many people and I see that often but honestly it's going going to be a lot of symptoms that people generally complain about. Low energy, brain fog, um frequent illness, digestive issues or classic stuff like constipation or diarrhea. Um a lot of people don't understand we need to have one to three healthy bowel movements a day and that's good gut health. We don't want to see any bloating. We don't want

11:28to see, you know, people feeling tired after meals or other digestive issues or things coming from the gut, which could be like skin issues like acne or rosacea or eczema >> or sleep or recovery, recovery from getting enough sleep or recovery from exercise. Then a lot of just like heavy PMS symptoms or low libido even >> a lot of people get stuck with like