How Stopping Smoking Boosts Your Fertility Naturally : Understanding the impact for both men + women

Video Transcription

Well, good morning. This is Jeff from Arcanum Wholistic Clinic. And I just have a few minutes to do a short video this morning. I wanted to pick up this article that came out this week from the clevelandclinic.org. And the article as you can see on the screen is called “How Stopping Smoking Boosts Your Fertility Naturally“. The subtitle is “Understanding the impact for both men + women”. So as always, I’m going to go through the article. Of course, highlight all the good points they make, and then I’ll fill in any gaps or any incorrect information or missing information.

Actually, the first thing I want to point out, this jumped out at me this morning was here. We have this fertility article, and it’s addressing points that affect both men and women. Of course, it takes two to make a baby. But mysteriously, this article is categorized under “Women’s Health”. As often, anything to do with fertility is kind of focused on the women. Whereas we’ve seen in some of the articles we’ve been looking at is, it very much, it shows up as being very equal. As I just said that old expression, “it takes two to tango”, or it takes two to make a baby. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Anyways, I’m sorry. That was just a side point. Let’s get into the actual content with the article.

And so they’re going to just talk a lot about the the ill effects of smoking on fertility for both men and women. And I’m just going to highlight some of the key points they make here. I guess one of their opening statements. They say, “Quitting smoking is one of the best natural ways to boost fertility. Women who stop smoking double their chances of getting pregnant each month.” Okay, so that’s just a good general thesis statement.

I’m going to scroll down. And we get into some specific question and answers here with Dr. Vij. And the question is, “How much does smoking impact men’s fertility?” He says, “There’s more inflammation in the semen of men who smoke. This can weaken the sperm and make pregnancy more difficult to achieve.” And of course, as we know, the general issue of inflammation is the cause of so many chronic health issues and chronic problems. But we have the direct link there between smoking, the inflammation in the semen, and the weakening of the sperm. I’ll just move down. He says, “They also contain heavy metals (like cadmium and lead), which are shown to be the primary agents of sperm damage.” So there we have some very specific toxins. And, of course, what I’ll actually talk about in a couple minutes as we get further down in the article. But they certainly do a good job in this article of identifying the very specific problems. But as we’ll get to their solution, it’s quite weak. It’s just actually a prescription drug solution that’s recommended. So of course, I’ll have something different to say about that.

This part here: “Studies show that smoking can lead to DNA damage in sperm. Some evidence shows that men with elevated sperm with DNA damage may have reduced fertility and higher miscarriage rates.” So this is interesting. It’s linking miscarriage with actually a factor on the male side. So that’s not too surprising once you understand the full extent of how fertility works, being both men and women thing. But we’ll also go on in this “How does it affect men?” question. He says, “Smoking is a risk factor in erectile dysfunction”. And of course, without the erection, of course that makes fertility more difficult.

Now going on, “How does smoking affect women’s fertility?” Things have been identified such as “failure to conceive” at both six and 12 months, the point of measurement, and “damage to the eggs and the ovaries”, as well as “ectopic (tubal) pregnancy”. Now, he says, “Once a woman becomes pregnant, smoking increases the risk of miscarriage.” So in this article, we see the risk of miscarriage coming from both sides—if the man is smoking or if the woman is smoking, both of those will lead to factors of miscarriage. And it goes on to say, “Later in pregnancy, smoking can cause birth defects, growth restrictions and maternal high blood pressure.”

Now he talks about the issue of quitting smoking. Of course, if that’s what someone is trying to do while they’re trying to get pregnant. He says, “When it comes to quitting smoking, don’t approach it with an ‘all or nothing’ attitude. If totally quitting isn’t realistic, cutting down can make a meaningful difference in fertility.” And what I add here as well is actually this is something that we will sometimes need to be adding to our natural fertility protocol. Of course, we have the full protocol regardless of if someone is needing to quit smoking or not. We have all the protocol related to diet and all the lifestyle factors, the sexual practices, the natural sexual practices. If you don’t have our book, all of that is laid out at www.NaturalFertilityBook.com. You can download our book for free. But the point I wanted to make here is to say going beyond our basic fertility protocol, is that we also can use a natural homeopathic smoking or stopping smoking protocol, which gets into all the aspects. There’s the physical aspects of quitting smoking. The physical part of the the addiction or the craving. And then there’s also the whole emotional dynamic. So all of that is handled in our homeopathic stopping smoking protocol. And you can ask us about that if you’d like help with that.

And just to go on in the article. This is interesting, too. He talks about “the impact of secondhand smoke” where it says, “Exposure to secondhand smoke in the household is bad for female fertility.” And there are specific points here. “Once a woman gets pregnant, secondhand smoke can increase the risk of miscarriage, low birth weight and learning disabilities.” Now this is all from secondhand smoke. “There’s abundant evidence that shows that smoke exposure to a newborn baby can lead to respiratory infections, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome.”

And then I like some of the points here. They are looking at some of the “common myths about smoking and fertility”.

So “MYTH 1: I’ll just stop smoking once I get pregnant to protect my unborn child.” So okay, so that’s a certain idea that ‘Okay, I’ll just, once I get pregnant, then I’ll stop.’ But they’re really emphasizing that as much as possible, to stop smoking at least three months before conception. That has to be cleared out of the body. And there’s factors leading into the fertility, leading into the health of the baby, which are happening, of course, long before the conception happens. Of course, that’s completely consistent with our whole philosophy of our natural fertility in general. Even if we’re not talking about smoking, we still have this very approach to the health much earlier than conception as early as possible, of course.

“MYTH 2: Vaping and e-cigarettes are safe alternative to smoking.” And they highlight that, no, those “still contain toxic chemicals that can harm sperm. Nicotine itself has also been shown to be harmful.”

And this is an interesting one that caught my eye, “MYTH 3”. I never even really heard this as a common myth, or an old wife’s tale or anything like that, but ‘mystery’! “Smoking after sex is relaxing, and can help promote pregnancy.” Now, from our perspective, again, if you look at our Natural Fertility Book in Chapter 8, we outline our whole understanding of the very kind of the healthy energetics of sexuality, the way we look at it. And, of course, that’s tied in not only to the physical activity of sex (and being physically healthy as far as sexual basic capacities), but also the whole emotional dynamics. And this whole interesting thing about ‘smoking after sex’ to supposedly be relaxing, that, in our perspective, is really an illustration of smoking being used as kind of a substitute for looking at any of the underlying emotional issues which may have not been dealt with, or partially dealt with. And that’s the whole thing about healthy sexuality. It will actually bring up some of the darker or more negative emotions in a relationship which needs to be dealt with. That’s positive, that’s healthy. Those need to be brought into the light and need to be dealt with. But this whole idea of ‘smoking is relaxing’? ‘Relaxing’, they are correct to point out, isn’t the right word. It’s more sense of covering up or masking actual issues that need to be dealt with.

So again, as I said earlier, if you are looking for help on your path to getting pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, and you’re looking for help with stopping smoking, let us know. We can help with that. And we can include it, of course, in our more general natural fertility protocol. And you can learn more of the details about everything in there—from the diet and the lifestyle, and everything that we construct around our natural fertility protocol. You can download our book at NaturalBertilityBook.com. That’s a free download.

And otherwise, I will see you next week.

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