This Might Not Heal You

In today's episode, Katy explores the much used analagy of your health being like a bank account, an analagy that she used vigorously in days gone by. We delve into the three main reasons this lens is actually problematic and how we need to stop viewing our health as bank accounts if we want to create real and sustainable change, and get into right relationship with our bodies and each other. We explore some better ways to be in relationship with our bodies while dropping the financial speak. 

In this first guest episode, Katy welcomes AJ Johnson, queer mental health clinician and friend to explore mental health. We explore why the biomedical model of mental healthcare is outdated and embedded in supremecist, capitalist culture that views the individual as the problem, and how instead, looking at things through an intersectional, relational and trauma informed lens whilst taking into account social determinants of health and the role of systemic oppression is exactly what's needed to help people move away from blaming themselves, and approaching their mental wellbeing from a place of loving forgiveness.  You can follow AJ on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/ajpanda11 You can follow Katy here: www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth You can work with Katy here: www.katybradbury.com You can email enquiries to: support@katybradbury.com

In this episode, Katy questions what it actually means to work with women, diving in some questions to unpick womanhood and gender biases. This episode is messy, raw and vulnerable, but exposes some truths that live within us that are so valuable if we want to lean into the expansiveness of what it means to be human.    You can check out more about Katy and how to work with her here: www.katybradbury.com

In this episode, Katy reflects on her journey through the notion of healing her own body, before realising there was a much bigger picture to consider. This is a conversational episode with musings from Katy's own life and how it has shaped the way she works with clients.

After a short summer break, we are back to discuss what it ACTUALLY means to listen to your body. In this episode, Katy discusses why this can be a difficult concept to grasp with all of our conditioning, and introduces a new framework from which we can better communicate with our bodies, understand their innate and inherent wisdom, and begin to get to know the very depths of ourselves. 

In this longer than usual episode, Katy guides you through a practical, step by step exercise for fostering a sense of safety in your nervous system, arguable the most central aspect to fertility and nervous system health. This is not about gaslighting, bypassing legitimate responses to a world on fire, putting our fingers in our ears and pretending it's not happening, or forcing ourselves to be positivie when we feel anything but. It's real, it's about you, and the step by step exercise if you take the time to do it, will be an invaluable tool for moving forward with your health and your life. There's also an invitation to attend Katy's co-hosted IN PERSON half day Grief tending and connection workshop in London on Sat 9th August 2025 (which is nowhere near as morbid as it sounds and will mostly be about somatics, community, and ritual with a bit of hypnosis, a few snacks, and a lot of singing sprinkled in. Link to tickets is https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-great-unravelling-a-workshop-for-grief-and-reconnection-tickets-1450863264079  Ps while you're here, check out my BRAND NEW WEBSITE www.katybradbury.com  And if you don't already, follow me on IG www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth   Make sure you email me to let me know how you got on with the exercise on support@katybradbury.com 

In today's show, Katy talks about reproductive health, including menstrual cycle health, hormonal health and fertility through one of her favourite lenses - evolutionary biology. It looks at the way humans evolved and some of the key features that make us distinct from other mammals and how this ties into the delicate balance of energy expenditure perceived by our brains, making perceived safety one of the most fundamental aspects to our reproductive health.

In this longer episode than usual, Katy talks through the three main ways in which blindly living under patriarchy has damaged our health, the environment and our humanity. She takes you through a brief history lesson with plenty of examples, and shares three things you can start doing today to decentre the patriarchy and honour our own health and livelihood.

Today's episode is a bonus follow up episode from the 'are we all fucking doomed' show. It names some important things that were unnamed in the previous episode, discussing paradox and how we can sit with big themes, holding multiple concepts at once when working on personal recovery and collective liberation with the ultimate goal of birthing a new world into existence. 

In this episode, Katy asks whether we are all doomed under the weight of polycrisis and offer some snippets of love, hope and power. Listen if you've been feeling the weight of it all and get comfort from things being named and held space for. There are some caveats that deserve further discussion in the second part of today's show, and those will be covered in a future episode. 

In episode 1 of the new and upgraded season, Katy gives a nod to all of her fertility peeps in a heartfelt conversation and gives an offering for all those who are still on their fertility journey.

A short but sweet announcement for listeners of Fertility and the First 1,000 Days! I'll be coming back to your eardrums VERY soon with a new iteration of the show. Look out for the change of title and art work coming soon. The new show will be called This Might Not Heal You so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, keep in touch with me, Katy, over on Instagram @katybradburyhealth Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth Email: support@katybradbury.com 

In today's episode, Katy discusses the small but mighty nutrient iodine. She reveals the system in the body that completely relies upon this mineral, and why getting the balance right is SO important, particularly for people with Hashimotos. WAYS THAT YOU CAN GET KATY'S HELP: Fertility and the First 1,000 Days Membership: https://katybradburyhealth.thrivecart.com/fertility-and-the-first-1000-days/ Fundamentals for Fertility online course: https://katybradburyhealthltd.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1130954/?action=signup Book a discovery call to talk through your needs for working together 1:1: https://p.bttr.to/378gAXH More info can be found about Katy on her website: https://katybradbury.com/  Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/katybradburyhealth Email: support@katybradbury.com  Love the show? Don't forget to leave a star rating and a review to share the love and help it reach others who need to hear this!  

Today, Katy makes some reflections on the podcast and her current practice, and discusses how widening out her focus to Women's Health can better serve YOU. During the episode she reveals her brand new comprehensive fertility service, which is designed to be a one-stop shop for fertility support, supporting you to reach your goal sooner than ever. 00:00 Hello, I am Katie Bradbury, a registered nurse, and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called, why I'm branching away from fertility, and how I can still help you.   00:27 So hello, hello. Welcome to today's episode, I'm really happy to be back for the second week on the trot after having a bit of an extensive period where I was getting quite sporadic with my podcast episodes, and what I wanted to do today, as I alluded to last week is just to come and chat to you, I guess a bit of a behind the scenes chat to just fill you in. Because I know that I've got a number of listeners who are really regular listeners to the show and who really enjoy it. I've had quite a few people get in touch to kind of ask about the absence of episodes when things had slowed down a bit. And I think what I realised is that part of the reason that I hadn't been coming to record the podcast every week is because I was just I don't know, I was finding that there was a resistance there. And usually, when we find some resistance in our lives, it's really worth actually sitting down with that and exploring it a little bit and hadn't had the chance to do that I was just it was just coming under the kind of the excuse, I guess of like, Oh, I've just been really busy. As you know, the summer has been really busy. But then, of course, the summer came and went and I was still putting off doing the podcast whereas actually, it used to be something that really lit me up. It used to be something that I used to really look forward to coming and doing. And I do, I enjoy coming into the studio at the bottom of the garden and making myself a cup of tea and coming and chat chatting to all of you, I really do. And so I was a bit puzzled as to why I was putting things off. And so this is what I'm here to talk to you about today. And I'm going to spend the episode just having a little chat through where I'm at at the moment. So it's a bit of a self-indulgent episode but hopefully, I'll just help you to make sense of things for where I'm at just now. And what it's made me realise is that I need to switch up the way of doing things a little bit. So what I've come to tell you today is just a little bit more info on where I'm going to be going next in terms of the services that I'm offering to you. So don't feel disheartened. Please, please listen on, I'm not saying that I'm packing in my fertility work at all. Very, very different to that. In fact, I'm figuring out a way to make it more comprehensive than it's ever been. But do stick around and listen to the episode I hope that you can join me today in whatever you're doing whether you're out for a walk or cooking or you know walking the dog or doing some chores or in the car or on your commute. Just settle in and have a little listen because I realised actually that I'm coming up to my two-year anniversary of when I set up my limited company Katie Bradbury Health. And although I was practising before that the birth of Katie Bradbury Health was really when I started to put my energy into supporting people in my private practice as opposed to anything else. So um, so that's kind of what my main focus has been for the last two years now.   04:26 My when back then in November 2020. My own fertility journey was still so raw, then actually and I'd, I'd not long had had my second child who I'm, you know, extremely blessed to have had. So she was born in June 2020. And then in November so when I set up as Katy Bradbury Health as I say my own fertility was just really still quite raw in. And for anyone who doesn't know about my own fertility journey that there is a previous episode, I can't remember what number it is off the top of my head, but I'll link to it in the show notes. So if anyone just want to go back and listen to my story, who doesn't already know it do, do go back and listen to that, because I go into the backstory a bit there. So if you're interested, you can do that.   05:33 But I so really still quite raw from my own fertility journey. And what I was determined to do then was help as many people as I could. And so I was at the end of embarking in a year-long programme that specialised or that taught me exclusively about fertility nutrition. So it was really so I was already you know, a nurse, I was already a nutritional therapist, I already specialised in women's health, I'd already got, you know, eight years of clinical experience by then, but this additional year's training was solely on fertility, male and female side, you know, fertility is a is an all-encompassing topic and looking at the underlying causes. And I was really determined, to specialise in fertility and to help as many people as I could, what I didn't realise two years on, is that I would end up holding the space for quite as many people, as I do, and that's an amazing thing, right? You know, I'm, I'm doing what I set out to do, which is helping as many people as I could. But what's happened recently is I've been feeling a little bit depleted. And I think that part of it seasonal, you know, of course, I think as we move away from the summer, that it's natural at this time of year, isn't it for your energy to shift. But part of it is because and this is, this might sound a little bit dramatic, but, hopefully, you can understand and, I will explain a bit further. But part of it is because for every person that I speak to who is struggling with their fertility, and whether that's, you know, an intensive one-to-one client, whether it's people who are in my membership, and that I support as a group, whether it's people in my Facebook group, whether it's people that reach out to me on the DM'S and Instagram, whether it's people who I speak to in this podcast, whether it's people who I indirectly work with, through a company in the states who I do some clinical mentorship for, it's, you know, there's a lot of people out there, and for each of those, and this is I don't mean for this to sound dramatic, but this is just the impact in me. But for a little, for each of those people, a little piece of me goes with them. And it's because it's a topic that I care so much about. It's very, very difficult to be really boundaries and to just leave that behind at the door, right? And so, what happened recently a couple of weeks ago, is I was at a bit of a crescendo, I guess, with quite a few people, you know, these journeys, of course, they ebb and flow, right? And so, sometimes you're up sometimes you're down. And the thing is, it's such a long journey, in a lot of cases, because lots of the people who come to me have actually got some really complex stuff going on. And it's not instantaneous, you know, it takes, can take time. And so the journey can last quite a long time. And then even when, you know, if a pregnancy does occur, it's not always all sunshine and roses, it's then Oh, hang on, we need to wait at least three months now before we can actually relax and then even then it can feel worrisome. So as I say, it's difficult to kind of be boundaries and leave that behind. And whilst I have got a lot better with my boundaries, in terms of I don't know, you know, being very clear in the way that I respond to people. It doesn't, you can't just leave, leave the emotional aspect of that out and so what happened a few weeks ago, is a few, I had a few people in my world who had you know, were coming to a bit of a kind of a crescendo whether that's, you know, they had IVF going on, or they've been pregnant, you know, they got pregnant, but that had a history of miscarriage and you know, there were quite a few people that I was talking to and it was quite intense and I was quite anxious for all of these people and I started in one of my journaling practices, I started writing out a prayer. And I started writing out a prayer for and it started just fit for each of these, I think there were about five people who one of them is a close friend.   10:16 And, you know, it's, it's I, as I said, one of them was like, in and out of hospital whos a client. And so I started writing about this prayer. And in this prayer, I, you know, I was asking for each of these people to get what they say, wanted, I was asking that, you know, that these, these IVF cycles would be successful, or that they, these pregnancies would work out. And I wrote, I wrote quite detailed messages in this in this letter, in this prayer. And then it all started spilling out. And I ended up then starting to think about other people who weren't kind of in this it sense of immediacy, you know, who didn't actively have this stuff going on, but who were still in my world and that I was supporting. And so I just carried on writing. And I carried on writing and writing and writing and pages later. And lots of names and lots of hopes and wishes and prayers later, I and I hadn't even stopped you know, I was full flow and I just realised my goodness, no wonder I'm feeling a bit on edge recently, because I'm holding this, right? And this isn't me being dramatic, by the way, because I have every, I completely know that it's far, far more intense for you than it ever could be for me. But a lot of it is, there's an element of kind of, and again, this sounds very dramatic, but it's just me being completely open, there's an element of, of re-traumatising there, because it's so close to my own heart in that I went through this myself, even though I'm so blessed and thankful to be on the other side of that. These are all feelings that I hold inside me because I've seen them and I felt them. And so I wrote out this prayer, I just realised like, go

Today, Katy discusses the minerals potassium and sodium, with regard to their utmost important functions in the body. Whilst these minerals may not directly be linked to fertility, you'll find out why they are so important for everyone to be thinking about, as well as the reason they are so imbalanced in the modern Western diet. 00:00 Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called the micronutrient series, macro minerals, part three.   00:15 So that is a bit of a mouthful, the micros and the macros. And it has been a little while since I released an episode. I did mention in the last episode, why some of my podcast recordings have been a little bit more sporadic recently. And it's a lot of it is around perhaps wanting to switch things up a little bit. Now just to give you a little update on where I'm at with that, because I've been getting my thinking cap on for the last few weeks about how I might best address this because I don't want to have fallen out of love with my podcast, you know, this is a passion project, for me. It's something that my listeners really value. And so I've been trying to get my head around the best ways that I can serve you as my listener using this podcast as a platform, whilst also meeting my own needs, frankly, and keeping it as something that I actually really enjoy doing. And I look forward to doing it. So I will come and talk to you probably in the next episode about some of my thoughts around that. But for today, I wanted to just continue and finish off within the micronutrient series that I've been doing. So back earlier, in the summer, I decided that actually it probably be really helpful to talk about some of the micronutrients in a little bit more detail as to their importance for health and well-being and particularly of course, around fertility. So I have been doing that and I've covered the vitamins so far. So if you are a new listener, or you're a regular listener, although my episodes haven't been regular recently, if you are a devout listener, I should say then you might want to go back and just revise some of those because some of those particularly the vitamins that we've been through so far, is really really important to understand in the context of reproductive health. So do go back and give those a listen. But I wanted to cover today the last in macro minerals, if you like which are, I guess four of the main minerals that our body uses. Now, I covered in the last two episodes, magnesium super duper important mineral and as I said in that episode, magnesium is probably the most nutritional therapy if you ask them what their favourite mineral is, and yes, that is a valid question. Most would probably start spouting off about magnesium because it is just such an important nutrient. But today, I wanted to talk to you about two together. And I did talk about calcium, of course last, last episode as well. So do go back and listen to those. But today I'm going to cover sodium and potassium in one go. And that's because it's very difficult to talk about one without the other. And what I think you'll probably learn from this episode, and it's going to be a fairly quick episode actually because the sodium I know that most people are listening to this because they're really keen to hear about the way things might impact their fertility and their reproductive health. Now, there are not really links as such around sodium and potassium directly to fertility. But they are essential, essential minerals for human health. And they are essential because they are involved intricately or inextricably, I should say, in homeostasis. And homeostasis is really the narrow balance that our body needs to be in, in order to stay alive. And so you know, with that in mind, it is, it is important to all aspects of our health. So I'm just going to briefly give a summary today about sodium and potassium and how we might be able to think of them in the context of our health and our diet. So sodium, first of all, is essentially salt, so sodium and chloride together, equal salt.   05:22 And so is one of those things that has had a bit of a bad rap over the years. And it's been, it's hard to the finger pointed at it for, you know, risks of hypertension, which is high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. So we're going to talk about sodium and potassium today in the context of blood, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk because it's a really important one to understand. And this might be ringing bells for you, if perhaps if you have high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease running in your family, and it might be ringing bells for you if you've had genetic testing done. And some of the genes have come up for you, which puts you at higher risk of some of those. It might be that you have had a previous pregnancy, where you had issues come up with your blood pressure or had something like pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. And so that might be why alarm bells come up for you at the mention of blood pressure. Um, but sodium is it's an electrolyte. And so what that means and there are other minerals that are electrolytes too, potassium is one of the other major ones. But magnesium and some of the other ones that I have spoken about, and will talk about are also electrolytes. But typically speaking, we talk about sodium and potassium as being some of the key electrolytes in the body. And what electrolyte means is that it has an electric charge, guess what? our bodies need electrical charges, in order to function because we need to be able to create energy. And you know, our hearts, for example, our heart conduction requires electricity, you know it, it requires an electrical charge, in order for it to actually beat. So. So as i say really, really important just in this context of staying alive and maintaining homeostasis. So sodium is an electrolyte it has this electrical charge, and sodium and potassium have this electrical charge at a cellular level. And so every single cell in our bodies has got pumps, essentially. So, so pumps on in and out of the cell, that are designed purely for managing the traffic of sodium and potassium in and out of the cell. Because sodium is mostly supposed to be outside of the cell, and potassium is mostly supposed to be inside of the cell, sometimes they can get muddled up and that balance can get shifted in the wrong direction. So these pumps have to work hard to make sure all the time, that they are in the right place so that they're not causing havoc, because that would be dangerous. So this is what's happening at a cellular level all the time. Now sodium is also linked with fluid balance. And so sodium is connected with our kidneys and our renal function. And it's involved in our ability to wee. And you might, you know, weeing might just seem so fundamental, such a kind of everyday occurrence that you don't really think about. But again, it's an essential part of our health, not just because it's excreting things that we don't want to be in our body anymore. It's one of the modes of excretion alongside pooing and sweating and various other things, but it's and breathing, but it's also maintaining that, that really important fluid balance in the body. So blood pressure and fluid balance, again, are inextricably connected because our blood pressure is, our blood is fluid, right? And so the pressure of our blood in our body needs to be maintained by sodium and also by potassium.   09:54 So sodium, as I say, does get a bit of a bad rap for being responsible you know there's again a massive drive perhaps in the 70s. As this science emerged in the connection between sodium and blood pressure emerged around having high blood pressure and having cardiovascular disease and a high salt diet. So lots of people went full pelt the other way. And this is the same with fat. And this is one of the things that I talk about a lot is the fat piece, we're not going to go into that today. But this kind of this notion that all fat is bad, it's complete rubbish. But that's, that's a topic for another day. But salt got a bad rap because of this association. And so then lots of people ran, you know, the other way, and it's low salt, this low salt that must include salt in my diet. But again, guess what? Salt is really important. So then subsequently, there is a bunch of research that came out, that showed that actually people who had like, low salt in their urine, because that's a marker of seeing how much salt is in the body. Were also at risk of these cardiovascular events and cardiovascular disease and hypertension. So just like with everything else, and I feel like a bit of a broken record here, it has to be in the right balance. So salt, if we think about the typical Western diet, I guess, the take home message here, and I'm not going to start talking about how many milligrammes of salt you should be having, because actually, I think that that kind of information can be really unhelpful. And what that does is adhere to this one size fits all approach for health, which actually just, it just is simply not true. Essentially, I guess what my advice would be to you, if you did want to consider this is just this notion that most people in the Western world, the majority of the salt, the majority of their sodium intake, comes from refined and processed foods, right. And refined and processed foods are laden with refined salt, which is also full of loads of additives and undesirable things. So most people in the Western world would benefit from significantly reducing the amount of processed foods that they're eating. And then so if you move away from processed foods, and move towards whole home cooked foods, then you're naturally going to be drastically reducing your sodium intake, at which point, you can safely be including non refined salt in the food that you're cooking. So, you know, again, it's r

**COMPETITION TIME** - listen to the first 10 minutes of the episode to hear about the competition in more detail - or head straight to this link to enter!  00:00 Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury nutritional therapist and registered nurse. Today's podcast episode is called The Micronutrients Series, Macro Minerals, Part 2.   00:15 So hello, and welcome to this week's episode, I really hope that you're doing well, I can't believe that we are now in September already. And I don't know about you, but it really feels like the season is changing already. I'm really noticing here in the UK anyway that the nights are starting to draw around now. We've seen a shift in the weather and you know, it's broken, finally. The drought has lifted a bit and we've seen some rain over the last week or so. So it really feels like there's quite a lot of change on the cards at the moment. So I'm feeling quite excited about that actually.   01:14 I'm continuing the episode today with the Micronutrient Series. So if you're a regular listener, then you will know that over the last few weeks with one or two things, intermittently, punctuating it, I've been doing a Mini series or not, not so mini series because there's a lot to cover on micronutrients. So I've covered the different vitamins so far from the fat soluble vitamins to the water soluble vitamins. And now I'm gradually working my way through the minerals. So i've been starting with what we call the macro minerals because there are four minerals that are just of upmost importance for the body when it comes to maintaining homeostasis and really needing to have tight levels, serum levels in the bloodstream of those vitamins so that so that we can stay alive actually so and we measure the macro. The reason I'm referring to them as the macro minerals is because we refer, we measure them in milligrammes or sometimes even grammes rather than micrograms. So we thought that those four would be a good place to start. Now, last week, I covered actually it wasn't last week, which I'll cut I'll come back to in just a moment. But last episode, I covered magnesium. Today, I am going to talk about calcium. And in the next episode, I will talk about the other two together in all likelihood, rather than doing an episode each on potassium, and sodium. So it might not feel like particularly exciting, but actually, feeding your knowledge with information on these micronutrients, and the role that they have to play in the body. Sometimes directly related to fertility and sometimes indirectly related, then it is really important to just help empower you. And to help you understand why some of the principles I talk about are so important. So when I talk about things like the Mediterranean diet, when I talk about things like including a range of, you know, multicoloured, eating the rainbow, and all the different range of plant foods and eating enough protein, and all of these kinds of things i'm not just telling you those things for the fun of it. Part of that is because of the macronutrient content. And part of it is because eating a nutrient dense diet, like the covering the principles that I've just mentioned, will enable your body to get enough of the micronutrients that it's so needs in order to improve your fertility and make a baby ultimately.   04:13 So I wanted to before I actually get started on talking to you about calcium today, because I've got a few things that I wanted to share with you on calcium. I did just want to cover what I touched on very briefly there, which was that I didn't do an episode last week. And indeed, if you are a regular listener, you might have noticed that over the summer. These episodes have been a little bit sparse. They've been a little bit few and far between. Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you about this because, you know hopefully, if you have been listening for a little while then we've got to know each other and you know, you know that a lot of what I talk about is around being congruent and being true to yourself. And so I've been sort of making excuses over the summer of you know, or well, you know, it's the summer we going away, we've got this on, and we've got that on. And that's why I'm not recording a podcast episode this week. Actually, if I'm going to be really, really true to myself, a part of the reason that I haven't been recording the episodes as regularly as I have previously, is because in some ways, I feel like I've started falling out of love with the podcast.  Now, that's not because I don't enjoy coming to talk to you, I really, really do, I guess I feel in some ways that I might have lost my mojo with it a little bit and run out of steam. And so when I was thinking about that, because I actually feel sad about that. When I, you know, I've toyed with the idea of maybe stopping doing the podcast. But actually, I do think that would be a real shame, because the feedback that I have had from people is that most of my regular listeners do really love it. I guess how it feels, sometimes, if I'm going to completely put myself in a vulnerable position here is sometimes it feels when you're recording a podcast that you're just speaking to nobody. And I know that I've got some of my regular listeners. And that's great. Most of the people that I know, are my regular listeners are people who are already in other parts of my world. So there are people that I interact and engage with, either in my Facebook group fertility in the first 1000 days, or through working with them directly. So in my group work, like through my previous group programmes, or through my membership, which is also called fertility in the first 1000 days, all through direct one to one work. So I do connect with those people directly. And I'm so grateful to have them in my life, because you know that this is who I do it for right? I do it for you and to connect with you. Because I know exactly how difficult this journey can be. But I guess where it feels a little bit ungratifying is that I know there are lots of people out there that do listen, that I've never spoken to me that have never reached out. And it feels a bit like I'm talking to thin air sometimes in that respect. So what I would, what I was thinking about is, how can I get my mojo back with the podcast? And how can I get your mojo back as well, because you might even be feeling like, oh, you know, you know, it could be better, or, you know, I'd love to get a bit more on board with it or a bit more engaged with it, or even, you know, reach out to me to chat to me for the first time if you haven't before. So what I thought I would do, and I'm going to be running this over the next few weeks is, is do a little competition. And what the competition is going to involve, it's actually very exciting for you, because I'm giving away a huge amount of value in prizes. And is do a do a prize draw. So I'm going to be doing a prize draw. And in order to enter that prize draw, which is going to have hundreds of pounds worth of prizes to give out. In order to enter the prize draw, what I'd like you to do is fill in a feedback form for me. So I've created a Google form. And it's something like 10 questions, they're all pretty straightforward. There's nothing crazy in there, you can really put as much or as little as you want in them, obviously, the more the better. But you know, it shouldn't take you too long to complete. So it's 10 questions, and I'm going to pop the link to it in the episode description. So whatever platform you listen to the podcast on, you should be able to click on the episode to look at the description. And I will add the link there's a few links in there as well of like ways you can work with me and this kind of thing. But I will add in there the link to the competition and to the to the feedback form in order to enter the competition. And what that feedback form is gonna give me is a little bit of a contact with you with my listenership so that I can start to feel a bit more connected to you. Because my aim for this podcast and I hope that this is true and certainly the feedback I have had so far. This is the case for, is I want it to feel like I am sitting in your living room having a chat with you and having a heart to heart that's that is my goal for this podcast. It's also to provide information and empower you and all of the other stuff but you know the reason why I just do it is me talking to you is because I want you to feel connected to me because this is a field that I have committed years of my life too, and I want you to know that I see you and that you are not alone in your journey. So I'm hoping that if you are a regular listener, then you do feel connected to the podcast, you do feel connected to me in some way. And what I will get out of this feedback form is I get to then feel a bit more connected to you and understand you, my listeners a bit better. Now, I do also recognise that not all of my listeners are going to be people that are struggling with their fertility. Some of my listeners might be other practitioners, or might be just people who are interested or just like listening to podcasts or, you know, have a have a passion for women's health. So I really, really want to get a sense of what proportion of my listeners are other practitioners, what proportion are people that are just interested and enjoy listening to health podcasts, and what proportion of my listeners are actually people who are going through this fertility journey, and are benefiting from a bit more directly from the content of the episode. So whatever your status is, in terms of who you are, and why you listen, I really want to hear from you. So as I say, I'll send out the the form, the google form with the questions. And at the bottom of the form, you can enter your email address in order to win one of the three prizes. So the three prizes are, drumroll drrrrrrrrr, I need a little, I need a little pad,

00:00 Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. today's podcast episode is called Micronutrients Series, Macro Minerals, Part 1.   00:27 So hello, and welcome to the show today, I'm really happy to be talking to you again. It's been a couple of weeks. So, if you're a keen and regular listener, you might have noticed that episodes over this time have been a touch sporadic. And that is, by no means a reflection on my desire to come and speak to you. It is just a reflection of how busy this summer has been in being away. And quite frankly, me just not being organised enough to pre-record episodes too, you know, so that I'm releasing them while, while I'm away. So accept my apologies for that. I'm actually going to be getting back on to the micronutrient series, this week. I took a little break from it with the last episode and shared a few strategies in the last episode I recorded a couple of weeks ago on how, how to navigate some of the trickier times some of the trickier points in the road when you are on this fertility journey. So, it just came at a time for me when quite a lot of the people that I was talking to were at a bit of a crossroads with regard to their fertility journey. And I just thought, Look, if I'm talking to a lot of people for whom this is relevant for right now, I'm sure it's going to be helpful for a lot of you. So if you did listen, I hope that you found it helpful. It involved a practical exercise. So please let me know how you got on with that I love hearing from you can always contact me on Instagram @katybradburyhealth or by email on support@katybradbury.com.   02:36 But anyway, without further ado, I'm going to continue talking about micronutrients this week, which for me as a nutritional therapist it is a super exciting topic. And I hope that I've been able to keep your interest in talking. As I have so far I've covered the range of different vitamins. So I've covered the fat soluble and the water soluble vitamins as they pertain to fertility and getting and staying pregnant. So hopefully, what I've shared so far has been interesting and informative. And I'm going to move on now from the vitamins to cover some of the minerals and what I've decided to do is divide it into what we call the macro minerals. And, and then some of that some of the smaller minerals, the trace minerals, so when we're talking about macro minerals, we're talking about the larger minerals, so minerals that we might typically measure in milligrammes rather than microgrammes. And there are four main macro minerals, and they are calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. So, I'm going to talk to you today, just about magnesium, because if you ask any nutritional therapist, and this may not be a question that you ask people very often, but in my world, it's a fairly common question. If you ask any nutritional therapist, what's your favourite mineral? I can guarantee that 90% of nutritional therapists would say that magnesium is their favourite mineral. And the reason for that is because magnesium is responsible for so, so much in the body.   04:46 At, we're learning more and more about magnesium and indeed all nutrients but I think at last count it was it was, you know, over hundreds of processes in the body that magnesium is associated with. And that's because there are things that directly require magnesium. And there are also things that require magnesium as a co-factor. So a part of the process in, you know, some kind of conversion within the body that requires magnesium to be there. So, and that includes things like hormone production. So, I wanted to talk to you just about magnesium today, I may group some of the other minerals together in future episodes, but magnesium, there is quite a bit to say about it. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about the hundreds of processes that magnesium is responsible for, but I am going to give an overview.   05:44 So one of the first things that we think about when we think about magnesium is its role in energy production. So the unit of energy in the body, so that the currency, if you like, for energy is called ATP. So every cell in your body, every process that happens in your body at any given time, requires units of ATP to be able to work. And so it's, it is just like, as I say, it's the currency for energy in your body. And magnesium is directly involved in the production of ATP. So there's something called the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. And they are parts of the energy production process. And they require magnesium. So really, really important. So often, you know, people who are like super tired, super low energy, we might be thinking about magnesium for, for those people. Now, I know that that doesn't pertain to fertility, in the most direct sense, but you know, if we're thinking, as I say about every process in the body, requiring energy requiring ATP, then it's pretty fundamental. One of the things that actually links into that, I'm just going to jump slightly from my intended order of play, if you like. And one of the things that that links to in terms of the energy and ATP is sperm, because what needs to move pretty quickly and in the right direction, its sperm, so ATP, so magnesium has a role to play in the motility of sperm. So if you're, if you or your partner has had their sperm tested, then you'll know that one of the measures of sperm is motility. And that is how efficiently the sperm actually moves because it needs to get to the right place. So magnesium is involved in that process, because those those little guys need ATP, they need magnesium in order to actually get to where they need to go. So that's, that's one consideration.   08:11 Now, the next thing that magnesium relates to, when it comes to processes in the body, involving fertility or things, fertility is a pretty important one. And that is that it is required for a number of steps during the synthesis of DNA, and RNA. So when we're thinking about, again, making a baby, so once we've got a fertilised egg, the thing that needs to happen next is that, yeah, that needs to be the DNA needs to be synthesised, right. So really important for there to be adequate magnesium, amongst other things to actually help that DNA do what it needs to do to actually make that baby. So really important in DNA synthesis its also involved in glutathione synthesis. So glutathione for anyone who is not familiar, is is kind of known as the master antioxidant. So there are lots and lots of different antioxidants. A number of the vitamins that I've spoken about already within this mini series are antioxidants of their own accord. There are other antioxidants as well and I often talk about having a diet rich in antioxidants. And one of the best ways to do that is by eating a whole range of different colours in your fruit and veg because all of the different coloured pigments contain a different type of antioxidant. But glutathione is yeah it's seen as the master antioxidant. And we know that these antioxidants, what they're important for when it comes to fertility is we're really thinking about the health of the egg, and the health of the sperm. Because it's oxidative stress, which can be higher as we age, it can be higher as we are exposed to different stressors, whether they are chemical, whether they're things that we're breathing, you know, air pollution, whether they are like exposure to plastics, whether they are pesticides in our foods. Lots, you know, stress even, you know, actual emotional stress, all of those things can cause oxidative stress and reactions in the body. So, the antioxidants, what the antioxidants do is help to mop up that oxidative stress. And of course, this directly impacts, so the oxidative stress, the level of oxidative stress in the body does have an impact on the health of your sperm and the health of your egg. So if you, you know, if you've got issues with sperm, if you are worried about the health of your eggs, then really important thing to consider.   11:51 Some of the other things that magnesium plays an important role in is, one is methylation. So methylation is something that I talk with my clients a lot about. It is a process that happens constantly in your body in most cells all of the time. And methylation is actually involved in again, DNA synthesis and repair. And it's also involved in the way that we metabolise hormones, particularly oestrogen, but also thyroid hormones and other things. So really, magnesium acts as there are lots of co-factors within the various methylation cycles that have to occur. And magnesium is one of the co-factors along with all of the B vitamins, zinc and a number of other compounds. So really important to consider in the context of methylation as well. And hormone production. So we're already building up a picture, that magnesium is pretty essential across the board, for many of the different things that we might be considering with regards to fertility. Some of the other things that magnesium is involved in so is involved in our, it has a role to play within our kind of absorption process, for vitamin D and calcium. And then some of the other, I guess, less direct things that magnesium has a role to play in. And this is a really interesting one is that magnesium has been linked in the research to systemic inflammation. So I talk about inflammation a lot. It is something that we really want to try and reduce or avoid when it comes to fertility for a number of reasons. If you don't know why, then do go and check out my one of my earliest podcast episodes that I refer back to all the time, which is called the Fire thats stopping you from getting pregnant. It's a really, it's an essential listen if you're trying to get pregnant. So please do go back and listen to that episode, if you haven't already. So systemic inflammation, so there was a study, this is interesting, there was a cross

In today's episode, Katy talks about some of the places she often feels people feeling stuck and unable to know what to do next on their fertility journey. She walks you through a practical exercise to enable you to open up to whatever the future holds. 00:00 Hello, you are listening to Katy Bradbury registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is called 'How To Know When It Is The End Of The Road'. 00:28 So hello, and welcome to this week's show. I'm taking a little break from the micronutrient miniseries having wrapped up the conversation covering all of the vitamins from the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K to the water soluble vitamins, C and the various B vitamins. 00:57 Now, I thought I'd take a break - I do want to revisit the micronutrient series and run through some of the really important minerals, because minerals have just as important a role to play for fertility as the vitamins do, particularly some some key minerals. As it's quite a long miniseries, I wanted to scatter a few other topics into the mix as well and I thought that ending the vitamins was a good little opportunity to do that. 01:37 Now, I wanted to talk to you today about how to know when it's the end of the road for your journey. Now before you switch this episode off thinking that either it's not relevant for you, or that it just feels a little bit too bleak and it feels maybe a bit too painful even to listen to an episode like this, please, please give it a chance. Because actually, regardless of where you are on your fertility journey, whether it has felt like a road that is far too long travelled or if you're just starting out the contents of this episode, it's a practical episode today. And the contents of the episode is really to give yourself some warm, nurturing space to actually explore some of these options in a really safe setting and will allow yourself some space to feel what comes up and to explore in writing what some of your options are for the future. So I urge you - even if you're not at a point on your journey where you're thinking it might be time to pack it in - I urge you to listen and to take part and to actually do the exercise with me today because so much of the fertility journey (and I remember this so well from my own) is tainted with fear. And it's tainted with the fear of 'what if it never happens'. And I can remember that that was the thing - that was the thought that was in my mind the entire time for me. And that is a horrible thought to be living with every day. So regardless of whether you feel like you've got a long battle ahead, or you don't know, or you're nowhere near giving up just now, the purpose of this episode isn't to tell you to give up, absolutely not. It's just to have that space to explore.   03:44 So the reason I'm recording this episode is because it has come up as a bit of a theme across a few of my clients recently. They're people, typically, who have undergone multiple rounds of IVF, or they've had losses that have been really painful emotionally. And perhaps they feel like they've got a decision to make. So for a few of them, they've got embryos in the freezer, and they just don't know if they can handle doing it again. I've got a couple of people in that situation. I've got a couple of people who feel like maybe they're just too old now and at what point do you call it a day when when you're getting older and it hasn't happened? So there are a number of people in my world who I speak to, who have got these thoughts running through their head and I thought, if they do, then there's a good chance that you do too, as a listener. Some of the circumstances that you might find yourself in at the moment - I've given a few examples already - you might be tearing yourself apart as to whether to put an embryo (if you've got an embryo) in the freezer, whether to put it in, whether to give it a go or not. It might be knowing whether to invest in one more round of IVF - and that could be because you said the last one was going to be the last one - or whatever it might be. So knowing whether to invest in one more round of IVF. It might be making the decision with your partner to stop actively trying, it might be deciding not to go ahead with a donated cycle and changing your mind. As I say, the circumstances in which you might find yourself are vastly different, but it's such an important exercise, regardless of your situation. This exercise gives you that little chance and that opportunity to actually face some of those fears that you might be living with every day and that you might have lived with for a very long time. What I'd love for you to do today is actually (and I don't know where you listen - maybe you listen while you're doing something else, so perhaps you listen while you're on your commute, or if you're walking the dog or or cooking) and now might not feel like the best time to sit down and do an exercise and by all means just listen along and use this episode as a reflective tool. But if you can give yourself the space to actually sit down and do the exercises that I'm going to walk you through today, I promise you will feel (you might not have the answer) but you will get some clarity and you will have some emotional processing that happens as a result of this, that can just help you with day to day life, of feeling the weight of such big decisions ahead. 07:00 So first of all, I really want you to sit with a question. So we're going do some some deep breaths in a minute together. But before we take the deep breaths, I want you to close your eyes and have a think about what that question might be for you. And it's a 'what if?' question. It's going to be pertinent to your situation - it might be 'what if we don't go ahead with the next round of IVF?'. 'What if we never have a baby?'. 'What if we never give my child a sibling?'. Whatever it is, whatever your biggest fear is at the moment, whatever the question is that's causing you the most turmoil at the moment, I want you to sit with that question: 'what if'. So, whatever comes up for you here, this is your opportunity in a really safe space (because you are safe at the moment listening to this, listening to the sound of my voice) you're absolutely safe, and I want you to sit with whatever feelings come up and whatever feelings come up for you are completely valid. Maybe those feelings are so raw for you right now that it brings up tears straightaway and you might even feel that blubbery 'can't control the tears', and that's okay, let them come. Let those tears come if that is where you're at right now. But it might be that different feelings come up, so we're going to just sit down now, we're going to do some breathing together, knowing that you're safe and knowing that you're going to take the time to do some journaling after this so that you're allowing yourself the space to let these feelings pass through. So it's perfectly safe to feel whatever comes up. So let's do some deep breathing. I'm going to guide you through deep breaths. We're going to breathe in for the count of four, hold for just a moment at the top of the breath, and we're going to breathe out for six. 08:59 If you're listening to my podcast I'll be counting along with you but if you're reading this and doing it yourself at home, repeat the breathing in and out for two or three minutes to relax yourself. 11:41 So just giving yourself a little moment to reflect on whatever feelings came up for you by allowing yourself that time, allowing yourself that space and allowing yourself those breaths, to sit with the question, or those questions, whatever it was that you asked yourself at the start of the exercise. Now what I'd like you to do is get your pen and paper ready because we're going to do some journaling and we're going to ask some questions around what came up, so you might want to press pause after each question (if you're listening to the podcast rather than reading!) to really give yourself the space to answer the question properly. So question number one is, 'what feelings came up for me?'. And when we're talking about what feelings came up for you here, I want you to be really specific, I want you to really get into the nitty gritty of what feelings came up. So if it was a sadness, what kind of sadness was it? Was it a longing? Was it a feeling let down? If you were feeling scared, what was what was the fear? Was it feeling terrified? Was it like a dull feeling in the pit of your stomach? Really trying to get specific on what those feelings were and what those feelings are that are dwelling within you, that you've been living with, potentially for a long time. Get as specific as possible about the feelings. Then question number two, once you've had a chance to talk through and explore some of the feelings that came up specifically, is 'what thoughts came up behind those feelings?' So some of the thoughts - really, really give yourself the chance to sit with this. And if you need to sit down and rewind and do some deep breaths again, to really sit with yourself and allow whatever thoughts they are to come up so that you can write them down, that is fine. Do whatever it takes because what I want for you is to get down, physically on paper, using your hand, what your feelings were and what the thoughts were. And some of these thoughts, as I say, could be surprising - some examples (I'm not putting these thoughts on you by any stretch of the imagination) that could have come up for you might be 'I don't know if I'd be a good enough mother'. 'I've let everybody down'. 'I can't imagine a life without children'. 'I feel so hurt from this journey, I don't know if I can do it any more'. 'I'm scared my partner will leave me if we can't have children'. All of those are really valid thoughts and there are hundreds of other thoughts that might come up for you. Those are just a few examples. So sit with it and give yourself the space t

00:02 Hello, I'm Katie Bradbury, nutritional therapist and registered nurse. Today's podcast episode is called The Micronutrient Series - Water Soluble Vitamins - Part Three.   00:15 So hello, and welcome to today's episode. I really hope that you're doing well. I am continuing this episode with the final instalment of the vitamins section of my micronutrient mini series. Now, that might be a bit of a mouthful, and it might not sound particularly exciting. If you're on a fertility journey, and you're new to the podcast, you might want to start an episode that feels more relatable to you in terms of where you're at right now. I've got plenty of previous content, including things such as how gut health relates to fertility, and I've got episodes on pregnancy loss, I've got lots of episodes on nutrition and nutrition as a whole and its' impact on fertility. I've got episodes on stress and impact of disordered eating and vaginal health and sperm power. So lots and lots of things to choose from. If you're a bit of a 'Fertility and the first 1000 days' podcast connoisseur, then this is absolutely the right place for you. And even if you've got an in depth knowledge or an in depth interest in nutrition, then this could be really interesting for you. So the micronutrient mini series, I've been just shining the spotlight on the micronutrients. So the micronutrients, mainly we're thinking about the vitamins and minerals - and there are lots and lots of different vitamins and minerals. I'm slowly working my way through them because I speak a lot about the balance of the macronutrients in terms of carbohydrates, and proteins and fats. I speak a lot about proportions - what sort of proportions on a plate we should be looking at, ideally in terms of those three food groups and how vegetables fit into that as well. But really, within that are these little superheroes, which are the micronutrients and the micronutrients are responsible for hundreds or thousands of processes within the body. That includes for fertility; whether that's to do with hormone synthesis, whether it's to do with egg health, whether it's to do with gene transcription, when we're actually creating a baby, whether it's to do with any kind of chemical messaging within the brain. Each of the micronutrients has a super important role to play and if you've been listening to the micronutrient series, within this podcast so far (because I have already covered the fat soluble vitamins, so vitamins A, D, E, and K, and I've covered most of the water soluble vitamins, so vitamin C, and I gave a bit of an overview of the B vitamins last episode) if you have been listening to that so far, then hopefully you're starting to get an idea of the importance, individually, of some of these nutrients. So it really is a matter of letting no man be left behind when it comes to these micronutrients. I'm hoping that with these episodes, it will help you to reflect on what your current nutrient intake looks like at the moment. I'm not thinking about supplements here; I'm thinking about diet, I'm thinking about what you're what you're actually consuming, because we always need to be thinking about nutrition first, the diet always comes first and the supplements are there to supplement that. So thinking about your own diet and hopefully this might help you, this micronutrient mini series, to identify whether there might be any possible nutrient, even if not nutrient deficiencies then nutrient insufficiencies, like not getting enough for your needs from a fertility point of view. So without further ado - I said last episode that there are quite a few B vitamins, so we've got B1, B2, B3, B5, B6   05:02 B9 and B12, so there are quite a number of them - and rather than shine the spotlight on every single one of them as an individual in each episode as I've done it in the previous episodes, because the B vitamins, as I explained last week, work really well collectively together. That's why they're often found in a B complex in supplements and in vitamin products. And there's a lot of overlap, there's a lot of crossover in the roles they play. So overall, as I said, last week, we're thinking about energy production, we're thinking about gene transcription. And I thought I'd just following last week's episodes, where I gave a bit of an overview on the B vitamins as a whole, I thought I'd just shine the spotlight this week on three of my favourite B vitamins because I do have favourites. And these are ones that I'm often thinking about in the context of fertility, and they're often ones that I'm wanting to ensure are found in adequate amounts for my fertility clients. And I often check their levels of some of these B vitamins using blood testing. So starting from B6, where as I explained last week, about the B vitamins as a whole being linked to energy production and metabolism, and I guess, being quite excitatory in that respect for our cells, B6, although it is involved in energy production, it's genuinely seen as quite a calming micronutrient. And the reason for that is because it's linked in with our neurotransmitter production. And it's specifically it's a bit of an enzymatic precursor to serotonin, which is, you know, it's quite, it's a bit of a happy hormone, I guess. And so, I'm often thinking about vitamin B6. And I'd love to know if this is you, because this is a lot of my clients. And a lot of my clients are really caught up in their head. And that's easily done when you're on a fertility journey, because it's a rough ride, and I get that, but lots of the people that come to me as one to one clients are, and I'm the same I've done a lot of work on this, but my predisposition, is to be quite high anxiety and lots of people are and so if you are typically a bit of an anxious person, and especially if you get anxious or angry even around the time of your menstrual cycle, so you know, in that pre menstrual period, then I'm often thinking about B6 for those kind of clients. And wondering whether their B6 might be either a bit on the low side because of dietary intake, or because they're using it up a little bit faster. And because of that anxiety disposition, so B6, that's why it's one of my favourites because it is quite a calming one and it's often overlooked as well. So B6 in terms of its, of course, it does still do all those other functions around helping to convert food into energy. It helps to make red blood cells as well which is super important. And critically, it helps to maintain and these three super B vitamins if you like these B6, B9 folate and the B12 that I'm talking about today, these all worked together really beautifully these three to help maintain normal levels of homocysteine in the blood. Now homocysteine is an inflammatory marker. So when homocysteine is elevated over time, for various reasons, it can contribute to long term inflammation and it is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and those big killers in the modern world. Now I know this podcast isn't about kind of cardiovascular disease and overall health. However, if you listen back to my most quoted podcast in the series, which is the fire that stops you from getting pregnant, we can really pinpoint that inflammation and various inflammatory mechanisms over time   09:57 is really one of the key drivers that we want to be minimising, we really want to be dampening down those inflammatory responses when we're thinking about fertility, because when we're thinking about if the body is inflamed for whatever reason, then it's going to be prioritising that, because inflammation is critically associated as far as that on a cellular level with a threat to life. And so our body will always be prioritising the threat to life over reproductive health. So we want to be keeping inflammation in check. And so these three B vitamins work together to actually help recycle homocysteine into another product called methionine, which in turn turns into a product called SAM-e, which is called a methyl donor, which just helps in the methylation process, which is responsible for normal hormone production and general metabolism, detoxification and gene transcription. So all of those things, all of those processes are really important in the context of fertility, the three super B vitamins that I'm talking to you about today, the B6, B9 and B12, they all work together to help to normalise levels of homocysteine in the bloodstream and thus lower inflammation. So good sources of B6 include fish, so things like salmon, tuna, halibut, any kind of fish really, but those three are probably the highest. Poultry - so chicken, turkey, duck, and also nuts. So hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, those are all really nice sources of vitamin B6. So to move on to vitamin B9, which is folate, so I do have a whole podcast episode related to folate in a previous one. So this is a bit more of a snapshot of folate, but if you do want to hear more about the importance of folate, and how critical it is for reproductive health, please do go back and listen to that episode. I'll link to it in the show notes. But folate, vitamin B9, you may know it as folic acid. So lots and lots of people do supplement with folic acid and indeed the NHS recommendations of everyone who's trying to get pregnant to supplement with folic acid for at least three months before trying to conceive. And the reason for that is because of this link. And it's actually because of this link to that methylation process that I just mentioned. But how that plays out is, it was found in the research, that people who had lower levels of folate are at higher risk for having birth defects, namely neural tube defects like spina bifida. So as a preventative measure for that the NHS guidelines is to take 400 micrograms of folic acid prior to conceiving to help reduce the likelihood of that, now, that is a bit of a contentious issue. I'm not going to sit here and talk about the debate betwee

00:00 Hi, I'm Katie Bradbury, a registered nurse and nutritional therapist. Today's podcast episode is The micronutrient series, water soluble vitamins part 2.   00:29 So, in today's episode, I'm going to be introducing you to the second set of water soluble vitamins, and that is the B vitamins. I've thought long and hard about how to do this because there are actually quite a number of B vitamins. So there's vitamin B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, and B12, and they all work quite synergistically, so it's kind of difficult to break them down, like the other ones where I've done for the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, I covered those in an episode per vitamin. And again, with the water soluble vitamins part one, which was vitamin C, I covered that in one episode as well. So the B vitamins are a bit of a funny one, and I've wondered how best to actually present this episode because it felt as though there was too much to say about the B vitamins to do it all in one episode because some of them have particularly significant relevance for fertility. But equally, it didn't really make sense to go through and have a whole episode on each of the six B vitamins. So what I decided to do and I started writing some notes this afternoon about going through some of them, and I was going to group them together. I was going to do in today's episode, I was going to do B1 through B3, or possibly through to B6, and then I was going to do separate episodes on B9, which is folate. I have already done an episode on folate, actually, but it was quite a long time ago now, and I have referred people to it a few times, but I think because it is such an important nutrient for fertility, I think I will do an episode on B9 specifically and then on the B12 as well as that's also another really important one for fertility. But I will tell you what I'm going to do instead, and that is to just give you a general intro today and a general overview as to the B vitamins as a collective, and then in the next episode, I will shine the spotlight specifically on some functions around fertility. So I will shine the spotlight on B9, which is folate and B12, as I said, and the reason I'm going to do it like that is because I don't actually want to spend too long in my husband's studio tonight. And it's absolutely not because I don't want to come and talk to you because I love coming to talk to you. I've been doing it for a long time now, and I am especially full of VAVA voom to come and talk to you because if you're a regular listener, you will know that I took a little break last week when I was on holiday. And it was just delightful. So I'm like full of beans, and I'm raring to go. However, I'm gonna have to tell you this story as any of you who are based in the UK or Europe at the moment will know that we are in the midst of a bit of a heatwave. It's going to be descending in on us a little bit more over the next couple of days, but my husband and I today, as it's Sunday, it's been the weekend, so we've been around the house this weekend. My husband and I today have been adopting the principles in a bid to keep the rooms in the house as cool as possible. If it's hotter outdoors than it is indoors, then the windows and curtains stay closed to try and retain the coolness in the house. If it's cooler outdoors, then we open the windows and doors. So it's Sunday evening now, and we have just got back from my parent's house for dinner. And you know, the air has cooled down a bit, so we're kind of going through the process of opening all the windows and doors. So the studio where I record this podcast which is my husband's music studio at the bottom of the garden, which a lot of you regular listeners will know already, we'd thrown the doors open when we got back, and my husband devotedly set up the podcast for me.   05:07 And then I came in, and I was just sitting here kind of just finalising, well, you know, carrying on with a few of my notes and preparing what I was going to say to you today, and we get quite a lot of mosquitoes around where we live, God knows why we live in the middle of London, well not in the middle, but we live in the East End of London, we don't live near any stagnant water that I know of, we live like fairly close to the River Thames, which is flowing water, I've no idea why there was such an abundance of mosquitoes in our area. And it's so bad that we can't actually leave the windows open at nighttime because we just get bitten to shreds. I'm sitting in the studio and just preparing what I was going to say to you, and the doors were wide open in this bid to keep the studio, to cool it down because my husband has to come and work in here all day tomorrow. And Oh, I noticed a couple of mosquitoes, right. And that's nothing unusual. As I say, we do get quite a few mosquitoes. And I kind of, you know, clapped a couple of my hands to kill them. Sorry, if anybody is a devout mosquito lover, you might want to not listen to the next part. And then I was like, do you know what, like there are quite a few mosquitoes in here now, and I'm in here with the light on, and the door is wide open, so I'm just going to shut the door while I record and then I will leave it open again afterwards to cool the room down. So I closed the door, and then I turned around to look back at the wall. The walls in this room are painted a brilliant white, and it was like something out of a horror story. I just turned around and looked, and they were just everywhere. There must have been about 30 mosquitoes in here just like sat like across the ceiling, and the wall was so just before hitting play on this episode. I've just been on a mosquito massacre. And yeah, my adrenaline was properly pumping. So that's what I've just finished doing. Thankfully, none of them were bloody, so none of them have got me, and I'm hoping that I've got all of them, and then there weren't any sneaky ones hiding. But you know, when you kill them, I'm gonna have to come and clean my husband's walls tomorrow because there are just mosquitoes smeared all over the walls. I feel really bad anyway. So for part of that reason, I don't want to spend too much time in the studio this evening because I don't want to get eaten alive by any, ah! And I've actually just seen one, there, Oh you little sneaky you. So there are definitely still a few lurking about, and they've got their eye on me because I've killed their cousins. So, yeah, that's my little story out of the way.   08:07 What I thought I would do today actually is just have, instead of going through the B vitamins one by one, just give you a bit of an overview about the B vitamins in general because B vitamins are really, really important. For fertility, yes, as for specific parts of fertility. But just generally, in terms of the way our body can function like we could not function without B vitamins. And the reason for that is because the B vitamins are the vitamin that is primarily associated with energy. Primarily associated with our body's ability to actually convert the macronutrients that we eat, so the proteins, the fats and the carbs into actual energy. And so the unit of energy that our body uses at a cellular level to complete hundreds of 1000s of different things is ATP, which stands for, can I even remember what ATP stands for now? It stands for adenosine triphosphate, which, as I say, it's the unit of energy that is used for so many cellular processes across the body, so energy metabolism. So, how many of you have low energy, right? Probably a lot. It's really, really common to have low energy. And I'm not saying that that's because you're deficient in B vitamins, necessarily; although you might be, B vitamins often have a lot to do with it. And so, there are lots of things that can deplete the B vitamins as well. And one of the big ones is the oral contraceptive pill. So that's really significant, isn't it and the amount of clients that I've had that have come to me, and I was in this situation as well, I was on the oral contraceptive pill for probably about 11 years or so before I came off, and I didn't even start to try to conceive immediately when it came off the oral contraceptive pill because I knew it might take a while for my body to regulate again. But one of the things that I would have been depleted in after taking the contraceptive pill for so long would have been B vitamins. So yeah, that's, that's really the overview of the B vitamins. And another really important role that they play is in DNA synthesis. So again, that's one of the reasons they are important for fertility. So those are huge reasons in their own right as to why B vitamins are really some of the first vitamins that we should be thinking about making sure that we have enough of from a fertility point of view.   08:52 Lots of us, as I say, the reason that you might be depleted in them is that you don't have enough of them in your diet. They are widely found, B vitamins are widely, and they're slightly different. Each B vitamin is found in slightly different or is high in slightly different sets of foods. But generally speaking, when we're thinking about the B vitamins, we're often thinking about animal products, right? So we're often thinking about meats, fish, and poultry, but they are found in lots of other things, they're found widely across the food world, but we just might not have quite enough of them to meet our needs a lot of the time. So all the things that I talked about if you're eating a Mediterranean diet, and you're having like your dark green leafy veg, and your nuts and your seeds and your variety of plant foods. And if you tolerate it well, then some dairy, and then there's fish, legumes, beans and also there are some fortified foods as well, that have been fortified with B vitamins.   11:19 So if you are eating that Mediterranean style diet, then you will have a nice amount of B vitamins in your body. And, but they can often become deple