The Baby Whisperer - Manhattan Magazine Feature
It's no accident that infertility is increasing as the world's climate is changing.
"I see a lot of polycystic ovarian syndrome in younger women, even in their 20s, because of poor quality of food and environmental factors like pollution," says Dr Julie Von, who has been applying her masters in Eastern Medicine, and her clinical doctorate in women's health and fertility to creating little lives for the past 15 years. "Industrialization causes infertility, and I'm trying to dial it back."
Conscious Conception is the key to her success. She starts with the basics -- getting to the root of where the deficiencies lie. First, she has her client consciously prepare her body for pregnancy by monitoring her health, including psycho-spiritual health, or what is needed to be happy -- think exercise, sleep, and good eating habits. In the second aspect, "I teach people how to manage stress, which is heightened by living in the city, in order to enhance fertility," says Von. Her tools? Holistic medicine, guided meditation, exercises, and practice in belief systems. She solves the mysteries that sometimes plague perfectly healthy mothers-to-be by eliminating basic fears about motherhood, the world, and the environment around us. She makes a list of the positives to reaffirm them.
Von's most successful case has been a woman in her 30s who had been through five rounds of IVF and had almost given up on getting pregnant.
Von worked with her to revamp her diet by removing all inflammatory foods, minimizing her high-speed exercise regimen, and helping her reconnect with her husband. Acupuncture, says Von, was also key: Theories range from Western perspectives that acupuncture increases serotonin and oxytocin --the body's "happy" neurotransmitters-- to Eastern beliefs that acupuncture calms the whole body by putting it into a receptive state where the nervous system relaxes. By recalibrating the nervous system like a scale, Von then creates a plan to time the calibration to cycles and in many cases, like this one, find success.
"I work as a fertility coach with people all over the world to track their cycles and discuss the blocks they're having," says Von. "I become their advocate because it's dire when you're in it. I am on a crusade to change the way we talk about fertility."
Written by Christina Cuomo
This article originally appeared in Manhattan Magazine, December 2016
For more insights and tips into
Conscious Conception—Check out My Book, Spiritual Fertility
With Love,
DJV
