Trying to Conceive in Your 40’s? Integrative Medicine May Be the Answer – Tsao Lin Moy on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

for me. And really not without trying, my father would take me, you know, as a kid on rounds and go visit, you know, patients on a Sunday or Saturday on his day off, you know, we’d go in and we like visit patients, so it was a really, you know, I got a lot of exposure to it. I mean, very interesting, it just didn’t speak to me the same way. And so, you know, I did have a career in business. But at some point, you know, like business is not in…the capitalist economy, there’s a part where all of a sudden you really kind of feel like, what am I doing? I’m not really contributing in a way that’s meaningful to myself, you know, just selling people more stuff. And, you know, if you want to have balance in your life, and you have a family, and really, if you’re going to work at something, you know, over 40 hours a week, you really have to love what you’re doing. Right. And that’s, like part of, you know, cultivating health and wellness and longevity, which is a principle in Chinese medicine is like, what are you doing for most of your day, if it’s not feeding you, then it’s really taking life away.

 

Manon Bolliger  05:30

Yeah.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  05:31

And so always interested in health. And I remembered I, you know, I really one point, it looked at going into massage therapy, but it seemed like it was too long for me to go back to school. But you know, when you get to a certain age, you’re like, oh, a year, that’s not that long, because the time goes by fast. And so, I went back to school. And while I was in massage school, we’re studying, you know, Eastern foundations. And part of this is in my book, also. And I realized, I was like, Wow, there’s so much more here, I knew the next thing would be studying acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and it’s lifelong of learning. It’s experiential so the longer you’re practicing, the better you get, because the more people you get this amount, you get this knowledge. And also, you bring your own, you know, personal experience to the table. So, I’m very aware of, you know, since I was in the business world, that I’m aware of the different kinds of stress that’s in corporate, and the behaviors and that kind of, you know, running on empty and burning out. And, and so I can actually speak to people who are experiencing that, because I actually know what goes on. Yeah, so this is, you know, something that I was able to do, and know that I would just get better and better. And then I would be contributing to, you know, other to society and other people’s quality of life. Educating.

 

Manon Bolliger  07:16

I think I read what you raised right here is I think, I’ve heard more than ever, in the last couple of years people going, you know, especially when we there were time periods where, you know, we were told not to work and then work from home. And, then if you’re doing a meaningless job from home, spending all your time, you know, it kind of makes you question life and put a whole new perspective, and I’ve never seen as many people interested, you know, in a more holistic approach to their life in general, right, which includes, what are they doing, you know, and how are they contributing, you know, so it’s nice to hear this story, because it’s a real transformation story that, you know, you listen to your heart.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  08:10

And it’s true. I mean, I think that, you know, in a way, we have to say that the crisis we had was really a blessing, it kind of stopped everyone in their tracks and question like, what is the meaning of life? What am I doing? What I’ve been doing, like killing myself in an office, when what I really want to do is spend some time with my family, and I want to travel or I want to, like, you know, do things that support my health. Like a lot of people did things that were not good for them. But also, a lot of people started exercising and getting really fit, we would see it here in New York, everybody running around, you know, around the island. Or all the videos’ people been doing yoga at home. And so, it really, in a way, also sparked, you know, hobbies that people wanted to do. Like I was talking to them about all this sour bread dough or the sour or the starters that people were making. And, you know, so are the yeast starters that people realize they needed to be self-sufficient. They also realized that, you know, how precious health is. They need to, you know, take care of themselves and that the cavalry is not necessarily coming. So, you need to make changes, right.

 

Manon Bolliger  09:41

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s the perfect timing for anyone that is…that has a solution that also empowers people to take charge of themselves, you know, and I think that is one of the big differences with, you know, pharmaceutical approach, because there, it’s sort of like the solution is in a pill and you take the pill, and then you think you’re doing everything and you know, you’re not, you’re just mostly masking symptoms. But that’s not the worst of it, the worst of it is that you’re not empowered to take responsibility. And you’re not empowered to think in a larger way, you know, at least for me, those are our pivotal.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  10:31

Totally, I mean, there’s a place. So, as you know, I do more integrative approach, I’m not going to tell don’t do this, it’s really like, okay, because people reject that. And also, they’re not ready. They need to understand for themselves, the choices that they make. So oftentimes, it’s really like, the ability to make an informed choice. So, if they have the information, they’ll make a better choice. So, you’re not going to buy shampoos that have all these chemicals in them because that’s going to affect your endocrine system. So, you will learn a lot about it, then you’re going to  go okay, I’m going to buy this this brand, because it’s going to be better for the environment for myself. Foods, you know, you can grow your own food, even in an apartment. Also, you know what’s processed or not processed to really make like, every day, you can make choices that are going to make a big impact on your health. And if you don’t pay attention, and you just like assume like, oh, I don’t read the ingredients, I like this brand, you know, that you are just like kind of handing over your health without really being conscious of it. And conscious living is, you know, part of a practice of mindfulness, and really connecting what is good for you. So, yeah, with the I mean, the western model is really the I call the broken and fix. You’re really looking at the symptoms, or the problem versus the problem. The symptoms are just a symptom of a deeper problem, right? It’s kind of like painting over, you know, like, a hole or something and you’re like, oh, it’s gone. Right? But the hole is still there.

 

Manon Bolliger  12:37

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about pregnancy, this specific challenges, or, you know, what you’ve found with trying to get pregnant at 40, you know, or 40, or, you know, in that age group, where…

 

Tsao Lin Moy  12:59

In that age group, okay, so what I would like to say is, you know, like, 40 is like a big number, you know, everyone, like, for many reasons, like 40 Oh my god, I’m 40. For Women we’re looking at, oftentimes, that is a cut off, or maybe 40 to 43 for them to even be accepted into a fertility clinic. And so, you know, chronological and biological age are not the same. However, if you’re trying to conceive, you know, that number really is something that becomes a, you know, kind of haunt, haunt you. And so, when I’m working with women, it’s really like getting their health, you know, getting their cycle regulated, really kind of quieting the doubt and the fear of whether it will ever happen for them. A lot of clinics will, you know, or I would have to say a lot of women are also extremely sensitive to their age. And clinics often just speak to statistics, which are also a little bit off. And, you know, what I’ll say is like, listen, they’re talking about other women’s numbers, not yours, you always have to remember that. You know, when they’re quoting Oh, well, you are this therefore that remember, they’re using data of somebody else. And not you. You…like if you were to change and I don’t tell them to change their age. But if their cycle is regular, they’re doing you know what they need and we’re tracking it, there’s no reason why they cannot conceive naturally. The issue that comes up is oftentimes that there are underlying conditions that were ignored. And, you know, what we see is a lot of, you know, maybe birth control. Women have been oftentimes teenage girls, which I really, it’s a big mistake, you know, they may have cramping, they get put on birth control when they’re 14 or 15. And then they don’t get off it until they’re 30 something. So, we’re looking at like close to 20 years on hormones. And so that has, you know, consequences because if there was an underlying condition, it’s been masked for really really long time. And so, then they’re in a situation where maybe their cycle doesn’t come back. Or they find out that they have polycystic ovary syndrome, or many other conditions, which also are because of environmental issues, like foods and to sugars, like all of the things that are in our diet. And then again, you know, what you mentioned like soaps and shampoos and other chemicals and things that are very hard to, for us to have control over. Those are endocrine disruptors and create hormonal imbalances. And so really like navigating, what can you do, because this is like you, you’re reaching a certain point where then it seems like the only thing you can do is hormones with IVF or IUI. Or, you know, the technology. And I’ve also noticed even women that are younger are showing up with fertility problems. So really age we look at is like wow, this is a big problem because trending towards an age group. But in many cases, a woman that is 40, what I’ve noticed is that she might be healthier than a woman who’s 25, 26, 27.

 

Commercial Break  17:07

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Tsao Lin Moy  17:49

Because of the difference in lifestyle, right, the younger generation spends a lot of time on, you know, computers and on their phone, they don’t sleep, they eat lots of processed foods, because everything is convenient, right and they live in really stressful lives, their sleep cycles are off, right there a lot. And in some cases, they may be like exercising excessively, if there’s a…so the everything at your fingertips. And just like, Oh, I just take this supplement, I take that supplement and lots of juices and things like that, that are that they’re less conscious about how they’re living. And so, I think something comes as you get a little bit older, that you become more aware of what you need to do and take action. And so, you know, on the one hand, you have younger people or younger women and men, more men are having problems as well. Sperm counts are low testosterone levels low. And these are environmental factors that are a part of that.

 

Manon Bolliger  19:09

But it’s been different men, it’s been declining, well, I think, I think 40 years steadily declining.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  19:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s no question. I would say no question that, you know, environmental factors have to be playing a role because we’re seeing, you know, across the globe, there is an increase in problems with fertility, but certainly more in industrialized communities. So, like the States and Europe, Japan, even China is like showing declines. Right? And what is the difference is that we’ve got, you know, all the technology, we’ve got all the plastics, we’ve got all the chemicals that we are using me and the climate, right? The difference is that the shifting, and that kind of tells our body, hey, you know, maybe it’s not a good environment for reproduction, right. And so, and also the way we work our expectation. How is it healthy to expect people to just sit in a chair for 10 hours in front of a computer. That’s not, you know, poor blood flow, stress levels, all of that. So really, you know, helping people to look at a, what can I do, to make, you know, design my life or to make these shifts and changes, and recognize that they have a choice to make the choices and also not to hand over their power. Right, to really learn about, you know, our body, our organism, like, how does it work and operate?

 

Manon Bolliger  21:07

I really like what you said about, you know, the statistics, because I know, it’s in one of my talks, I always say, well, it’s still not a statistic about you, you know, and the thing is, you govern that, how that statistic will fall, you know. Because most of the research, they don’t go into the details that matter, from a holistic perspective, you know, even the research on cancer, they don’t check whether people eat, you know, processed food or not processed food. Well, the statistics will be very different if you took into consideration, you know, all of the factors that we take into consideration. And, yeah, and so I really liked that point. And I’m just wanted to also address for people who and ask your thoughts on it as well. Naomi Wolf, just put out a book, The Body of Others, and she talks about fertility, she’s done a research on…with that she has a team now of 1500 researchers that have received the Pfizer documents. And she did a big part on fertility, which was not tested during pregnancy, but some woman did get pregnant and found in a large amounts of infertility, large amounts of miscarriage and then last trimester, births like that went wrong. I mean, isn’t what is that called the official name, but when you lose your baby, basically, at the end of term, and, you know, I was so saddened to hear that, and why I’m raising this is because a lot of people are asking about this, will this affect fertility because this is something I’ve put in my body. And, you know, I think that seen in the bigger context, it’s also everything else that you do, you know, like, we might not eat GMOs, but this might be the one exception, where we’re, you know, using something in our body that could have an impact, but if everything else you do, is really healthy, you know, it’s going to be a different statistic than what was discovered here in the 15% you know, lack of fertility.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  23:49

It’s a very, you know, like, so it’s very challenging to, you know, to make that correlation, right. Because of just the way that, you know, research is done or clinical trials, oftentimes, they’re really narrowing down specifically looking for particular data points, and then anything else is kind of, not part of what they’re measuring. So it’ll either be I mean, and also you have to look at the way research is designed in order to prove someone’s theory and oftentimes is designed in a way to prove that they were right. So, we have to look at that there is just isn’t enough taken into consideration because they’re not measuring that to like, dye it. I mean, I agree that, you know, you don’t have to measure it, but it would be really important to continue to report it and just collect the data. And later on go, Okay, do we think this might be a variable. I mean, one of the things with, you know, scientific research is they really you’re trying to narrow it down to like one molecule or one factor and everything else to eliminate. And the problem is, is that, you know, we’re individual. We have so much, you know, like social, socially different, ethnically different life experiences, like all of those factors that are going to influence the outcomes of anything of our health. Right. Yeah, I mean, so the one thing that, you know, that is often not measured is, you know, the person’s optimism. And also remember, like people who go into clinical trials, and this is something that came out of when I was at a psychedelic conference, and they actually were interviewing, you know, some of the people that were in clinical trials for really resistant depression. And I know Canada is doing a lot of research with psychedelic medicine.

 

Manon Bolliger  26:11

Yeah

 

Tsao Lin Moy  26:12

They’re very much on the, on the forefront of, you know, a VAT compared to, to the US, which, you know, has, has a big hold on it. But one of the things that, you know, there were three people that were in the trials, and they, you know, they were so happy they got into the trials, because they have this, these levels of depression, that we’re not responding to medication, and just desperate. They get into the clinical trial, they are experiencing relief, right for that period of time, and then the trial is over. Goodbye.

 

Manon Bolliger  26:52

Yeah.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  26:53

So what happens is, is that the people who are mean, in order to get into a clinical trial, you got to fill out a lot of forms, you’ve got to qualify under certain parameters to be accepted. And oftentimes a lot is eliminated, because we just are trying to find people within a particular category. One of the other issues that comes up and in particular shows up for sure, in psychedelics, I’m not sure. You know, how much it shows up in other trials is there isn’t enough diversity. So oftentimes, not enough people of color or different ethnic backgrounds, and you have one group that you look at the information, and then what happens is it gets applied to the general population.

 

Manon Bolliger  27:46

That’s right.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  27:47

Yeah, so there’s so many, but that’s the way that’s the way you know, the standardization is, is really the lowest common denominator. So, what happens is, is that we don’t have the like, with East Asian medicine is really personalized. So getting back to fertility, it is not just an age thing, it’s really a matter of personalizing it to the individual. And really like understanding what they can do, what changes they’re going to make, whether herbs are they appropriate, you know, what have they done? What about their partner? What about their work environment? Where are the areas that are influencing their overall health, which in turn is going to make a difference with the fertility and success. And also, you know, successful pregnancy, a healthy baby. And so, so here’s the thing, people who come to see me, are also of a particular carrier category, right? They are highly educated, searching for something else, they also have their Western doctors, they are making a choice of recognizing, okay, this has gotten me only so far, I’m not abandoning it completely because I see the value, but I also recognize that it has a limitation. And so that is a group of people who it’s great because they can actually navigate what’s going to work for them within a system, you know, and then make the changes on their own. And that’s really like there’s, we kind of can’t expect a health system to be the end all and the be all right. The systems are…I mean, I look at it if it’s an emergency, I’m definitely going to the hospital right. Everything else. I you know, make sure that I you know, if I feel a little scratchy throat, I’m going to take certain herbs um, I eat whole foods, exercise, do breath work, meditation, really look at making sure that I’m happy, doing things that I love, right. And also surrounding myself with people who I find interesting, right, going on their podcasts and talking about topics that are interesting. And, you know, helping people is like a really…is extremely satisfying. Yeah. And this is something that, you know, no other entity is telling me to do it. Like, kind of your journey, and I think that plays a huge role in, you know, health making those choices.

 

Manon Bolliger  30:52

Yeah, no, I think, I think it’s really important what we discussed today, you know, because it’s very in line with the kind of mindset that when you turn 40, and you want to have children, and you’re confronted with data, statistics, all the biases that exist in our society to realize that comes from a system approach, like you said very clearly, like it’s defining to the microscopic element, the one thing. When we are in fact, an interconnected whole and, you know, everything affects everything. And so, you know, I find that it’s so exciting to share with people that, you know, herbology, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, many, many other, you know, alternatives, speak to that whole, so we don’t have to be limited by data, we don’t have to get depressed because of it. And there’s always opportunity, and then, you know, sorry, I’m just quoting your words here. But it’s a journey. And that’s the other beautiful part about this, you know.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  32:14

It is, I will tell you is that the more…so I also, I mean, in my book, I actually talk a lot about, you know, connecting and really like your inner healer and things like that, but really developing a relationship with not just yourself, we have a relationship. But with things that you’re doing, like the food, like recognize, like, you know, taste it fully, recognize as it goes in, like how it converts to what it’s doing, notice what kind of energy you get from it. Notice if you have dreams, notice, like, because there is more than just, you know, plants or living things, they have information in them that we’re taking in, and our body is communicating with it. And there is a consciousness. So, when we are conscious, you know, our you know, that energy and vibration is also coming in within us. And so, when we look at things that are processed, they’re not really done with what we call like our virtue or our 10 fingers to virtue, you know, not done with care. As much as when you make your own food, or you make the choice of picking, you know, this piece of lettuce, lettuce head or making that choice energetically, you’re creating a relationship of health and healing for yourself. Right. You’re bringing love to yourself. So, I think that is important for people to recognize. And again, they make these choices every day to be conscious that there.

 

Manon Bolliger  34:03

Yeah, well, our time is up. But it was really enjoyable discussing all this and thank you. And for people who want to get your book, we’re gonna put a little link. I think in your form, there is a place that people can get a copy of it if they’re interested.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  34:22

It’s on Amazon.

 

Manon Bolliger  34:23

It’s on Amazon. Okay, easy. Okay, very good. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time.

 

Tsao Lin Moy  34:29

Thank you.

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.