After I finished my university degree, instead of applying to medical school, I went on to learn the art and science of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Since then, I’ve made it my life’s mission to bring about change and improve people’s health by bridging the gap between Eastern and Western medicine. In my first ten years of practice, I realized my dream by joining forces with Dr. Jess Goodman, a family physician who invited me to open up the first integrative medical practice in Mississauga, a city in the Greater Toronto Area. For over two decades, I’ve had the privilege of guiding countless patients back to wellness by combining Eastern and Western medicine.
Throughout that time, I’ve had a fire burning inside me to write this book, to share my story and other stories of miracles I’ve observed through my clinical practice and personal experiences—stories of men and women whose remarkable recoveries after negative mainstream diagnoses have defied what’s understood about modern science.
At the core of our existence is the undeniable and natural desire to create life. Every year, however, millions of people around the globe face fertility challenges. TCM practitioners generally see everything, and in the course of my practice some of those people found their way to my clinic. By word of mouth, people learned that I treated fertility successfully and compassionately. Moreover, I did not get married until I was thirty-eight, and having a child was always in the back of my mind, so it interested me to preserve my own fertility. Over time, as my TCM practice grew, so did the portion of it devoted to fertility challenges. At this point, I’ve seen it all: the heartbreak, the grief and shame, the hope, and the joy of eventual pregnancy and childbirth.
Traditional Chinese medicine is the oldest experiential science in the world. This ancient wisdom has been tested through the ages, and documented directly from patient response. For thousands of years, TCM doctors discovered what worked and what didn’t, and continued to expand upon knowledge accumulated through acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.
These are not the kind of double-blind studies on which modern Western medicine bases its treatment of sick patients. However, Chinese medicine is the world’s largest and longest study of how to prevent and treat illness, conducted on real people for thousands of years. All the drugs in the world combined have not been tested to this degree.
Stemming from the philosophy of Taoism, which means “the way,” TCM emphasizes living in harmony with nature and being in the present. It’s a holistic practice incorporating acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, lifestyle, exercise, and proven dietary therapies. The strength of Chinese medicine comes from its focus on preventing illness. In the days of the Emperor, his physician was paid only when the Emperor was well and not if he was ill. Only royalty and the very wealthy enjoyed the privilege of access to the Chinese doctors’ expertise.
Today, in Western culture, we are not taught to maximize our health and prevent illness as we’re growing up. Most of us were raised with the Western medical model, which focuses on examining individual parts of the body and treating illness affecting these parts. If we have pain, we typically take anti-inflammatories and painkillers. We tend to wait until something goes awry before we treat it. We do not learn other things we can do and other health practitioners we can consult who specialize in preventive health care. We learn to take better care of our cars than ourselves; for example, we know we need to change the oil and take our vehicles for regular tune-ups. But when it comes to health, many people put their bodies in the hands of their doctors instead of seeking the knowledge and insight to know and feel when their system is out of balance.
I don’t mean to generalize, as many patients I see are proactive in their efforts to conceive—curious and interested in doing whatever they can to prepare their bodies, minds, and spirits for having a healthy baby. However, most of my patients come to me as a last resort, often desperately seeking help because they’ve already been having difficulties getting pregnant, often for months or years. Many of my patients have said they wished they’d come to my clinic first, before embarking on the expensive and painful journey through fertility clinics.
This book includes stories, both instructional and inspirational, for anyone experiencing infertility or seeking to understand it. These stories offer hope, humour, and a healthy dose of practical advice—advice that is often overlooked by mainstream practitioners but easy to incorporate into your life. The stories are real, although I’ve changed the names, and sometimes the occupations, of the women and couples I’ve written about to protect their privacy. My hope is that these accounts of their fertility struggles will inspire you to take charge of your reproductive health and overall well-being.
One of the best things you can do for yourself when trying to get pregnant is to focus on yourself—to relax and be in the moment rather than focusing your energy on trying to put a baby in your belly. Through your fertility journey, you will find there is no one “right way” to build a family, but there is a way that’s right for you.
The inward focus demanded by the drive to procreate necessitates a holistic and intuitive combination of Western and Eastern medical traditions, plus a huge dose of love and self-acceptance. A strong foundation of balance and aligned energy enhances the possibility of conception. By blending new research in the field of epigenetics (which I will discuss more in Chapter 1) with experiences from Eastern and Western medicine, Pathways to Pregnancy can help you optimize your chances of conceiving while nourishing the unborn mother in you. Rather than dealing alone with the overwhelming amount of contradictory information online, Pathways to Pregnancy can help you navigate the fertility world, dispel your shame, decrease your stress, discover the surprising interconnectedness of life, and renew your belief that you can overcome fertility challenges.
That said, I do not want to create false hope. In practice, I always say, “I cannot guarantee a baby in your belly” and “We cannot force a pregnancy; we can only encourage it.” Whether you are trying to conceive naturally, with the help of assisted reproduction through a fertility clinic, or with a combination of both, it’s up to nature to decide if there will be a pregnancy.
My insights into this increasingly common condition go beyond the professional. I myself went through a long process of fertility treatments, eventually conceiving and giving birth to my daughter Zoe in 2012. I write at some length about this in Chapter 8. The point is, I am more than a practitioner handing out advice to those struggling with infertility; I have “been there” myself, I know how patients feel, and this knowledge has made me a better and more empathetic TCM practitioner.
You may be tempted, when reading this book, to skip over chapters you think don’t apply to you. For example, if your fertility challenge is rooted in poor ovarian reserve, you may wonder why you should bother with the chapter on PCOS. However, I encourage you to read every chapter, for several reasons.
First, each chapter includes at least one and sometimes two inspirational stories. For women and men with fertility challenges, the pathway to pregnancy can be stressful; you need all the inspiration you can get. Second, many of the sidebars in the book are pertinent to the whole topic of fertility challenges, not just the particular issues addressed in the chapter in which they appear.
Similarly, although each chapter focuses on a particular problem, it also includes information that anyone facing fertility challenges could find helpful. For example, although Chapter 5 focuses on male factor infertility, it includes information about a gender bias in the fertility world that virtually every woman experiences. And through the remarkable story in Chapter 9, I pose the question, “How far would you go?” It’s a question all women, men, and couples should consider early in their fertility journey, and this chapter illustrates why.
Whether you are just thinking about starting a family or have been struggling with fertility challenges for years, Pathways to Pregnancy offers real hope of healing. More than that, it may be useful for your friends, family, co-workers, and employers as they strive to support you in your journey.