By Aimee Raupp, MS LAc

This article was reviewed AimeeRaupp.com's editorial team & is in compliance with our editorial policy.

Join me today to find out about FSH & AMH.

Here Is The Full Transcription Of The Video

Hey, Facebook. Great to see you guys. I am doing it again, coming to you live, like I do every single week, and talking to you about really important health topics, ways that you can activate, enliven, and revitalize your life, your health. Today, we're going to be talking about a really important fertility topic, AMH and FSH. If you guys are on, you know what these are. You know what they stand for. They may be ruling your life, and I want to help you with that.

If you don't know who I am and you're brand new to me, I'm Aimee Raupp of aimeeraupp.com. You can head over to my website to learn all about me. When it comes to fertility, I've written several books. But when it comes to fertility, this is the book that everybody loves. It's a bestseller. It's called, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: Natural Ways to Improve Your Fertility Now and Into Your 40s.

Yeah, let's get into it because I was doing a quick Google search before I came on to see … Okay, so not sure what AMH and FSH are. Okay, I'm going to get into them. So you're going to wait one second, For Your Spine. I did a quick Google search, things like … I wanted to see what came up when I typed in how to improve ovarian reserve, how to improve FSH and AMH, egg quality over quantity. It was just really interesting because the first page to the second page of Google basically is all medical articles talking about FSH and AMH, and how they can't change, and how they impact your fertility. But then by the time …

So on page two for improving FSH and AMH, I actually come up with an article which is great. I was on page two of Google. I was excited to see that. Hi, Cece. How are you? Great to see you. Instagram, you guys are really rolling on, Facebook too. Before I even get into anymore, I just want to say two things. A, thank you for being here. B … I want to say three things. Any questions, I'm just going to … I'm going to answer them. Keep coming at me with questions. I'm definitely an expert in this field. I definitely know what I'm talking about. I have been practicing for 16 years. I've helped a lot of women conceive against the odds. I myself conceived in my 40s, and so I know what is going on in this conversation and I know I can help. So definitely ask. Definitely shout out where you're from, what's going on, your fertility story. Let me see how I can help you as best I can.

Also, stick around for a little bit, maybe in about 15, 20 minutes. I have a really incredible free giveaway for you that is all about how to improve the quality of your eggs. Give you a little more hint. It's a free mini e-course, and it's going to go live on Sunday, September 15th. It's got a lot of information for you on how to improve your egg quality. Because as you're going to learn from this conversation, so AMH and FSH are tests that your doctors will use to determine your ovarian reserve. A lot of times, they use these numbers to tell you how fertile or not you are. What you need to know, though, is that these numbers are really only important when it's coming to doing fertility treatments. And even then, not that important, but helps doctors understand how well you're going to respond to their medications when you're doing something like an IVF, so to keep that in mind.

But, ovarian reserve has nothing to do with egg quality. Some will say it does, but it does not. There is zero scientific research that shows ovarian reserve equals egg quality. I see a lot of questions rolling in, so I just want to make sure I don't miss them. My estrogen levels are too low and very low AMH. Is it bad to drink soy milk? Yeah, definitely don't drink soy milk. No one should drink soy milk. No one anywhere ever, ever should drink soy milk. It's highly refined, highly … What's the word? Like negative in nutritional value. If you ever need to do soy, it should be organic, sprouted, non-GMO, so in the form of miso, tempeh, or sprout tofu, and even then just the small amount.

Estrogen levels are low and AMH is low, I would look at other things. Follow the tips that I'm going to go through here. Get this book and really follow the tips in here. I'm going to call you Serenie. This is where you want to start. Definitely not soy. Soy is genetically modified for the most part. Soy is highly refined. You're not going to get any nutritional value from there. I know people talk about how it's estrogenic, but it's estrogenic and then the not so good way. You want really good quality fats, and lots of green vegetables, and lots of good quality animal protein, things like bone broth, to really help beef up your estrogen levels and that will in turn improve. I'm going to talk about AMH in a little bit, so hang tight for that.

Could a miscarriage cause any problems to TTC? I've been trying for a year since. Yeah, it can. Sometimes there could be some scar tissue that forms after a miscarriage. If you've been trying for a year and it still hasn't happened, I would go to your doctor and get what's called the hysteroscopy where they look at the inside of your uterus to make sure there's no scar tissue or adhesions. If you had a D&C, it's much more likely that there could be scar tissue or adhesions. But sometimes even a natural miscarriage you could have these. You could also have not miscarried all of the tissue and it could causing a bit of an unhealthy environment in your uterus preventing conception. You could also be still very heartbroken over the miscarriage and that could be preventing conception.

I'm from London. I am 40, and to be honest, only this year started schooling myself on fertility. I'm not in a relationship and trying not to freak out about it. Okay, For Your Spine. So you stick around because you're not going to freak out about this. 40, you got this.

These numbers always drive me nuts, as I'm not only normal but great AMH and my doctor still have unexplained [inaudible 00:06:28]. So that's the other side of it. Jamie brings up a good point. Which, Jamie, I'm so sorry. Five years dealing with secondary infertility absolutely sucks. Sucks a lot. I just was in my group, my Yes, You Can Get Pregnant e-course group. I do office hours in there every single week for my girls in my community. That's what we're talking about, FSH and AMH. And the one said like, “I have … ” Her numbers are like … She's 44 and a half. Her AMH is 1.99. Her FSH is six. Phenomenal numbers by these standards, right? She is doing donor because the last time we tried with her own eggs it didn't work, which is very sad. I get stuck on these cases, too, because I'm trying to figure out why. But she's ready to move on to donor because she's just ready to have his baby, and I respect that. So these numbers can be perfect and you still don't respond well to treatment or get pregnant naturally. And these numbers can be imperfect and you don't respond well or …

There's a study that came out in the Journal of American Medical Association just last year, or 2017, sorry. They followed a thousand women, and they looked at their FSH and their AMH. What they noticed was regardless of those numbers, they were too high or too low, like poor ovarian reserve versus good ovarian reserve, in one year's time, they had the same reproductive potential, meaning they all got pregnant at the … The odds within each group were the same of getting pregnant. Basically, these numbers have nothing to do with your ability to get pregnant or not get pregnant.

But what doctors like to do is use it as a measure of ovarian reserve, and then they base their approach with you on that. So basically, if your AMH is low or your FSH is high, they say, “You don't have a lot of eggs left. You better get on the ball here because you're never going to have these children. Oh my goodness. You're totally screwed. You're totally never ever, ever going to get pregnant. You're going to need to do IVF or donor egg immediately, like tomorrow,” no matter what your age is. I've heard them say that to the girls in their 30s, girls in their 40s, girls in their 20s.

So I want us all to just take a deep breath about that because I think the number one way to begin to improve and shift our AMH and our FSH is to not let these numbers define us. They are just numbers. They change all the time. They are responsive to estrogen, and blood flow, and inflammation in your body. They change all the time, so we need to not let them define us. We need to not let AMH or FSH define us. We need to actually begin to understand that they don't matter that much, or maybe at all. I would venture to say they don't matter at all.

I've never had my AMH or FSH tested. I'm 45. Yeah, I have a regular cycle. I ovulate regularly. I'm not worried about it. To me, it's about quality, not quantity. You could have a high FSH and still have thousands of eggs left. You could have a low AMH and still thousands of eggs left. You could have really good AMH and FSH and have thousands of eggs left. But if you have a shitty lifestyle, you don't eat well, if you don't sleep enough, if you don't manage your stress, if you don't take the right supplements, you are not going to have good egg quality. And it doesn't matter what you do because it's going to be hard to get pregnant if you don't have good egg quality, and good quality is a representation of not just overall health.

What I say is people consider me this fertility expert, right? I help women get pregnant. That's what they say to me all the time. The truth is what I help is you to become the healthiest version of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, and nutritionally. When that happens, your hormones get balanced. Your fertility thrives, and you will get and stay pregnant. You will respond better to your fertility treatments. Things will work out for you on many levels, not just when it comes to fertility. Your life will change on many levels in so many good ways. Fertility is an extension of health. Egg quality is an extension of health. When you improve the health of every single cell in your body, you improve the health of those eggs in your ovaries.

This is not about how many eggs you have left. This is about the quality of your overall health. And health is mental. It's emotional. It's physical. It's nutritional. So, are you following me here, guys? Let's see. Any other questions rolling in?

Just want to educate myself on optimizing my health so I can have a baby naturally when I meet my person. That's exactly what I did, For Your Spine. So I didn't meet my husband … I met him right before my 40th birthday, and that's … I wrote this book when I was 37. So I just followed everything I said in the book, and I was like, “I'm not going to freeze my eggs.” People wanted me to freeze my eggs. People were really stressed about me, and my health, and my fertility, and my ability to have kids. I was like, “I'm going to do what I tell everybody else to do. And when I meet the guy, we're just going to get right on it,” and that's what we did, and it worked out, and it's great.

So are you saying to drink cow's milk? Not necessarily, Planted Soul. It depends on how you tolerate dairy. I'm just saying that you should eat good quality protein. Soy is not a good quality protein. So it's a very poor quality protein, in fact. There's a lot of research. You could read tons of books about it. One like The Whole Soy Story is a really good place to start. But, soy is highly genetically modified and highly refined. So if you're consuming organic, non-GMO, fermented soy products, you should be okay in moderation. But, cow's milk isn't for everybody. It's not for me. I do coconut milk. But there's so many other places to get protein, and good healthy fats, and all that.

What's the best way to gain your fats for fertility, especially if you're a vegetarian, pretty much dairy free? Sprouted nuts and seeds, ghee, coconut milk. I'm a huge fan of animal protein, to be honest, so bone broth is what I think is one of the best things. And eggs are one of the best things. If you do eggs … I know vegetarian, but maybe some veggies do eggs, you could do eggs. Those are another great place. Olive oil, avocado, things like that where you want to get your good quality fats in. But, your diet should be pretty high on fats for fertility. I think the macros is like 35, 40% for fat, and then 25% protein, and then the rest carbohydrates.

I'm 41. Last year, I had two miscarriages. I gained the weight, and one doc told me this is the reason I have low vitamin D, low iron. It could be. You want to get back. I always say that the healthy fertile weight where you conceived is where you should get back to. You really want to address the D. If your vitamin D is low … To any of you guys, your vitamin D is low, guess what? All your hormones are going to be off. Your AMH is going to be off. Your FSH is going to be off. You need to have your vitamin D in a healthy range, so you need to supplement with vitamin D. It depends on where you're at, but I recommend anywhere from 2,000 to 7,000 IUs a day, depending on the client and where their vitamin D is low.

Low iron, same thing. You really need to build up those blood stores. A nutrient dense diet with things like bone broth, and liver, and eggs, and really good quality fats will help you. Lots of green vegetables will help you build back that iron. Really important that you do that.

Not true. You just lost all credibility. Okay. I mean, that's fine if you don't agree with me, but I definitely have a lot of credibility and a very strong science background. So do your research on soy. You will see.

So let's see. But again, everybody's allowed to have their own opinions here. I've just been doing this for a very long time and have done my research and have a lot of integrity, so keep that in mind. Thank you.

How do you feel about kombucha? I love kombucha. I'm drinking some right now. I water it down, but I'm drinking some right now. It's a good fermented tea beverage. I like the way it tastes. Gives me some probiotics. I watch the sugar content in them.

I have to do pretty heavy immune protocol, and the doctors recommended using 40 milligrams of Prednisone. I'm worried that my body will not do well with a high dose. Used to have nausea at 20. Can you recommend anything to help me handle the Prednisone? Yeah, I would follow the protocol in my Body Belief book, Anu, and go from there. The 40 milligrams of Prednisone is very high. I wonder how long you'll be on it. If it's a short period of time, you should be okay. Make sure you're taking a good calcium supplement to help prevent any negative side effects from the Prednisone. But, I would definitely follow an autoimmune diet, like the one I have outlined to Body Belief.

I had FSH as high as 103 previously, brought down by daily estradiol to normal range, but never seem to ovulate. I'm now 39, almost 40. Never tested AMH. Are there ways to stimulate ovulation other than HRT? One of my favorite ways to stimulate ovulation is acupuncture. It is powerful. I use acupuncture, Chinese herbs. I would do castor oil packs, Mayan Abdominal massage, so things, ways … AMH is secreted by your ovaries. FSH is secreted by your brain. It's a feedback loop. It's created by your brain. It talks your ovaries, and then it tells your ovaries, “Okay, I need more follicles,” or, “I need less follicles,” and the number goes up or down based on that demand. It's responsive to estrogen as well. AMH is secreted by the ovaries, and some say maybe a better indicator of ovarian reserve.

But what you want to do to improve the health of your ovaries is you want to just improve circulation and blood flow to those ovaries. The best ways to do that, exercise every day, 30 or so minutes of exercise every day, amazing for improving circulation and blood flow in your entire body, but also really improving the health of every single cell in your body, including those in your eggs, your ovaries. Acupuncture, Mayan Abdominal massage, castor oil packs, these are the best ways to improve circulation and blood flow to the uterus, to the ovaries to help improve function.

So Allison, one of the most powerful things I use in my clinic is acupuncture, and moxa, or electrical stimulation to induce ovulation, and it works like a charm. Chinese medicine, which is what I'm a doctor of, we do a really detailed intake and devise a treatment plan for you. We give you diet recommendations, lifestyle recommendation, supplement recommendations, herb recommendations. Then, all those things combined really help restore balance and harmony in your body.

Let's see. What about B vitamin levels? So you know, there's not the best way to test your B vitamin levels. You can do serum. You can do the Dutch test. They can be low, but they can be … What's the word? The test can be false where you could have really high circulating B12 but you're not absorbing it. To me, I look at cognitive function, sleep, anxiety levels to give me an idea of how they're absorbing their B vitamins. But, B vitamins are the most important for balancing hormones. I tend to recommend liver. That's my favorite natural B complex, so liver as in the organ meat. You can take it in pill form or you can eat a couple ounces a week. Three to four ounces a week is the equivalent of what I recommend. You can also take a really good B complex. Thorne makes a great one. I also like spirulina, great source of many of your trace minerals and some of your Bs as well.

16 years, four miscarriages. Treatments for years. Feeling sincerely defeated. Keto over a year. Lost weight, felt great. Life imploded, gained a little back. I'm back on track having moved recently. I have no OB doctor. Nine rounds of IUI did anything. I send you a lot of love, Winona. That sucks. But you're still here, and you must still have a little bit of hope. I love that the keto helped. I think that's great. It's a lot of fat, which is good, and gets you back into balance. I'm not a huge, huge fan of intermittent fasting for fertility. Not all keto people are intermittent fasting, but going too long without food is not best for blood sugar or for hormone. So when a woman's trying to conceive, I definitely don't recommend the intermittent fasting. But a keto diet can work really well, especially if you know you're just getting enough fat protein and really a lot of veggies in there.

Anu, I love you back. Aw, Jamie. You're the best. You're the best, Melissa. Aw, you guys. How do you recommend using castor oil packs? Every day? Okay, Carolina. Beth, can you post my video on there? So Carolina, I have a video, a YouTube video, on how to do castor oil packs. I'm going to give that to you.

Then talk to me about, as I asked about B vitamins, I get really large [inaudible 00:20:13] soreness, post-ovulation, but I think semblance of pregnancy is not for me. Could this be progesterone being low or high? It could be. It could be a progesterone imbalance. You could get that checked on cycle day 21.

So you guys can see, I know I got off topic from the AMH, FSH conversation. But, AMH and FSH are just representations of hormones in your body. What you want to do is balance your hormones. And if you're worried about your ovarian reserve, what you're really worried about is your egg quality, and I have something for you. I have a free mini e-course that launches on Sunday, September 15th. It's only going to be available for a limited time, so those videos are going to disappear. You get five videos, you got a bonus video, and then you get a live Q&A with me. Again, this is all free.

You get a 35-page PDF that I created for you, my team and I, that's going to give you … Basically, it's going to outline the strategy for you to succeed at this e-course. So in this mini e-course, I'm going to give you diet, supplement, lifestyle, and mindset tools. Seven Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Eggs, that is the name of the e-course. So you're going to get this PDF that helps you rock it out of the freaking park so you can improve that egg quality. I want you to work. Think less about how many eggs are left and more about what I can do right now to balance my hormones and improve my egg quality, because there are so many things that you can do, okay? So many things.

So head over to aimeeraupp.com/egg, E-G-G, course. Sign up now. Then, you're going to get emails from us when the first video goes live, the second video goes live. So you're going to get a video a day for five days. Then, you get a bonus video. Then, there's a live Q&A with me where you guys can come on and ask me any and all fertility-related questions and I'm going to answer them.

16 years of clinical experience. I've helped thousands of women. I got pregnant myself naturally in my 40s. You got this, I can help you. We can improve your egg quality. We can't do anything about how many eggs you have left. We can improve your equality quality, though. We can improve your blood flow. We can improve your circulation. That's the stuff that really matters when it comes to this FSH and AMH conversation. These things do not define you, and they do not dictate your fertility. Remember that. You have so much control here over your health and ultimately your fertility, and I'm going to show you how.

So check out the free e-course. It's awesome. I put a lot of time and energy into this. And it goes way beyond even what I talk about here because I've learned stuff since I wrote this book. We're actually in the process of … I'm going to do a revamped edition with some new information. But you guys, this free mini course is going to give you a lot of information. I highly recommend that you sign up for it. You literally have nothing to lose. It's free. It'll be about two hours of your time.

Plus then, the PDF gives you even more things to do. Then you get the live Q&A with me, which is about an hour and a half. So you get to ask me your questions. You're going to email your questions in beforehand, and I'm going to go through and answer everybody's questions. I can't wait to do that because I love to be of service to you guys. I love to help. I've learned a lot over almost my two decades of doing this. I've seen, I think, every single fertility case out there on the planet, and I believe I can help you.

We have a few more questions in here. How often would you suggest I get hormone checked to monitor if changes I'm making lifestyle? Last have them checked in May. That's kind of up to you. I don't want you to be too attached to the numbers, but maybe every six months.

If you want to get pregnant, stop eating high inflammatory foods. I totally agree. Here's another thing. Commercially-raised animal products are highly inflammatory, and I'd never recommend eating them. I still recommend eating seven to nine servings of vegetables a day, really good quality fats, really good quality protein, and about three ounces of protein three to four times a day. So you're still eating a really anti-inflammatory diet, and that will help you get pregnant. Avoiding processed, genetically modified, highly refined foods, like soy, is not going to help you get pregnant. Very clear. The research is very clear. The data is extremely clear on this. Again I was a research scientist before I became an acupuncturist, so I know what works, and I know the diet that works, and I've been doing this for a very long time.

Off topic. I hope this is okay. Do you have any insight on blocked fallopian tubes? I would look at acupuncture, Chinese herbs, Mayan Abdominal massage, and castor oil packs to really help. Empowering talk right there. Oh, thanks.

Aimee Raupp:
Autoimmune, Hashimoto's. Should I cut the gluten and dairy? Definitely. Hashimoto's, you got to cook gluten and dairy. Check out my book Body Belief. I have a whole autoimmune protocol, anti-inflammatory diet in there to help you heal autoimmune disease. Aw, you guys are so sweet.

My D was a 34. I was happy because it was low. Yeah, you want it up towards a 50, but you're getting there. How rude, that lady. That's all right. Everybody's got their things.

Is maca good for fertility? It can be. It depends on the client. I don't like to just haphazardly recommend supplements, especially herbs that are powerful like maca, but it can really be helpful, especially if sex drive is low or progesterone is low.

Baby aspirin for trying to conceive. Again, I don't like to haphazardly recommend, but it can really help improve uterine blood flow. And if there's a history of miscarriage, baby aspirin can help.

Do you suggest B12 injections? Again, depends on B12 levels. The Serrapeptase enzyme, great idea. The Wobenzym is another one I like. Great information. You guys are so sweet. Is elevated DHEA related to anything for fertility? It can be because the DHEA is one of the androgens. Testosterone can be high, and that can impact estrogen and progesterone, so absolutely. How to quit smoking cigarettes. Okay, for another time.

I got to go. I got to hop. I'm going to be on somebody else's Facebook live in one minute. So I'm going to go. Check out the free e-course, aimeeraupp.com/eggcourse, and I will see you there. I'm going to see you in the live Q&A. I cannot freaking wait. You guys are the best. Love you. Bye.

***End of Transcription***

Aimee Raupp is a licensed herbalist, natural fertility expert and acupuncturist in NYC, offering natural fertility treatment, care & coaching solutions to women who want to get pregnant!  Get pregnant fast with natural fertility care, Aimee’s online fertility shop & coaching solutions.  Aimee Raupp has helped hundreds of women to get pregnant naturally! Aimee and her team are experts in Chinese Medicine, Massage & Eastern Nutrition!  Get pregnant naturally, achieve optimal health & vitality, take control of your health!  Aimee is excited to work with you at one of the Aimee Raupp Wellness Centers NYC. Aimee's Fertility Coaching Program is a personal guidance along your fertility journey. If you are trying to get pregnant naturally, this program is for you!  Aimee Raupp offers holistic, wellness and natural fertility books. Learn how to enhance your fertility and get pregnant naturally with Aimee’s cookbooks and diet guides!  Shop Aimee Raupp's natural fertility shop with online workshops, videos, consultation and coaching on fertility, meditation and healthy nutrition!

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