The One Where Baby, It's Cold Inside
Hey hey! Thanks for stopping by! We're Ted+Rebecca, two crazy kids overly fond of documentation and Scrubs gifs. If you're new here, check out our FAQ post or our most recent infertility piece detailing our adventures with Clomid. We're glad you're here!
Today, we’re talking about cool temps, perhaps in an attempt to psychologically escape the heat wave currently melting Cincinnati. Specifically, we’re talking about cool basal body temps. And what TCM has to say about what they mean. And a brief foray into traditional practices we're dabbling in, just to see what will happen.
First things first: What is TCM?
TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, is a holistic approach to wellness which has been around for thousands of years. It uses lifestyle, diet, and remedies including acupuncture and herbal tinctures to help the body naturally resolve health problems on its own. It’s been the subject of lots and lots and lots of clinical trials in recent years, because its practices seem to yield good results.
In fact, one recent infertility study showed that working with a TCM practitioner yielded almost double the success rates of conventional Western medicine fertility interventions.
Are we going to pursue it? No idea. We’re currently working through Clomid and gathering tons of data about my health. (I’m annoyingly stubborn about showing up as the most prepared kid in class, so whether we pursue TCM or NaPro or whatever as our next step, I want to be able to say that I’ve already fixed my diet and discovered a cure for COVID while brandishing color-coded and collated BBT charts in our future doctor’s face. It’s fun to work with me, I imagine.)
BUT this was an interesting turn of events for us. As an engineer/the son of an ER doc and a trained researcher who works in big data, we’ve both grown up fond of our pharmaceuticals. Our first reaction to reading a few case studies about TCM, like, working for people made us...skeptical.
But then again, we also no longer really believe that sex makes babies (I wish I was kidding), so we decided to see what was up.
We bought ‘The Infertility Cure’ by Randine Lewis -- a medical doctor and a TCM practitioner -- and we’re currently working through it. Meanwhile, because I can’t just read a book, I need to be doing something, I started to do some research.
What we've been doing:
I’ve been temping just about every morning for the past four years, so I know that I tend to run cold. Very cold. Like, literally off-the-(BBT)-charts cold.
(If you combine this with the fact that while I was in EMT school they used to use me as a mannequin for checking ridiculously low blood pressure, you’d be right to suspect that I’m some kind of vampiric or otherwise undead person...with a refrigerator, apparently, where most women’s metaphorical ‘ovens’ are.)
I’d been avoiding Googling things like ‘am i just too cold to get pregnant’, because frankly I didn’t want to know the answer. My inherent basal body temp didn’t seem like something I could shift or control, and I didn’t want to find out that we had a fundamental problem. Was this smart? Likely not. Whatever, it’s done.
Last month, I finally looked into it. I found two general theories:
Western med: It’s fine. It’s fine! Everything’s fine. Take your Clomid. [SLIDES IVF PAMPHLET ACROSS TABLE]
TCM/Eastern med: Well, duh, of course you’re not getting pregnant. You have a Yang deficiency.
[RECORD SCRATCH]
Tell me more.
DISCLAIMER #1: Everything that I’m writing today is almost certainly an oversimplification of TCM (and probably Western med as well), and also we’re still learning about it, and etc. I’ll correct this as we learn more, if necessary.
Very basic TCM tenet #1:
We’ve all seen the yin/yang symbol from Chinese culture. It’s emblematic of a central tenet of Chinese mysticism as well as of TCM itself: the idea that there are two battling yet synergistic energies which govern just about anything. These are your Yin and your Yang. These represent opposite, interdependent forces which fuel each other and keep your body balanced.
Yin properties include darkness, coolness, stillness, and rest.
Yang properties include heat, brightness, and motion.
Again, oversimplification alert, but it generally seems that if you have a Yin deficiency, you’ll be overheated. If you have a Yang deficiency, you’ll run cold.
A deficient Yang energy been linked to several symptoms, including low energy, poor circulation and digestion, edema, lower back pain, low energy, and….infertility.
LOL WHAT.
I'm pretty sure that a Yang deficiency has also been linked to a problematic lack of universal basic income in the US, curable by giving every American $$$ per month.
Let's see if that joke ages well past November.
This has been a TedTalk.
There are one million quizzes you can take online (like this, this, and this) to screen your cycle and general health to see if you have a Yin or Yang deficiency. Working with a practitioner is doubtless a far better idea, but we’re not quite there yet.
A note to skeptics like us:
If you’re shaking your head at this and thinking we’re veering into murky territory, I get it. Been there. However, many TCM theories are being validated by modern clinical science.
Here’s a helpful PubMed piece about how low body temps could be indicative of generally undiagnosed thyroid issues, which would certainly explain a lot of the above-noted symptoms. (The doctor in that interview also noted that simply raising your body temp would alleviate many of those symptoms.)
We’ve also seen case studies of woman after woman (notably: this incredibly persistent lady) going through a gamut of Western med fertility interventions, including IUI and IVF, before turning to TCM as a last resort. And then being pleasantly surprised to find that it worked.
It’s also extremely attractive that instead of a) being told that low body temps aren’t an issue, b) being told that I definitely don’t have thyroid problems, despite having a lot of the symptoms of one (see list above), c) being all fixed-mindset about my body’s status quo, and d) thinking that there's really nothing I can do on my own except angsting (and saving up my pennies), TCM validates my neuroses and has publicly available, easy to follow, probably-won’t-hurt guidelines to help you get your Yin and Yang back into balance.
Do I actually have a thyroid issue? Idk. My eyebrows are luxuriant as hell.
Are my Yin and Yang really out of balance? No earthly idea.
Will doing a few things I found on the Internet help me cure a condition I’m not sure I have? I mean, history and common sense would suggest ‘no’.
Am I going to do it anyway? Obviously.
PRACTICES TO RESTORE YANG ENERGY, ACCORDING TO PEOPLE WHO KNOW WAY MORE ABOUT THIS THAN I DO
- Eat traditionally “warming” foods according to TCM (garlic, ginger, turmeric, onions, yams, dates, bone broth, cherries, etc.)
- Avoid traditionally “cooling” foods like sour fruits, dairy, seaweed, certain veg, and anything that’s literally cold (raw stuff, and anything straight from the fridge.)
- Get more Vitamin D with a morning run or walk and an afternoon walk.
- Get more exercise in with a morning run or walk and an afternoon walk.
- Cold showers. Yep. Basically, they force your body’s heating system to kick in. Much more on cold therapy later! (Look at all of the forward advertising I’m doing! I’m such a tease.)
It’s a little funny: These practices seem almost too on the nose.
[CUE: RETRO PSA MUSIC] Have you been feeling a pinch too cool? Why don’t you try...warming yourself up!
However, the materials were free/things we’d be buying anyway (“food”), and I’d already read a bunch about the benefits of freezing yourself occasionally. About a month ago, I started implementing these practices and pointers into my day-to-day.
Well, I actually stuck to some of them! I took a walk or two every day, took zero hot showers (and many cold ones), and I think I’ve only applied sunscreen once in the last month, when I knew I was going to be outside for several hours. (You only get the full benefit of the sun if you don’t wear sunscreen for a bit.)
This was a big change for me, as I’m absolutely the one who shows up to the beach with zero skin showing, an umbrella, a backup sun hat, and a gallon size bottle of SPF...which I purposely fail to rub in all the way.
[DISCLAIMER #2: Wear your sunscreen. About fifteen minutes of sun exposure is good for you. After that, wear your sunscreen. And a mask, but for different reasons.]
Following these practices also led to lots of me settling down on the couch with a cup of tea, winking at Ted, and saying something about ‘warmin’ up my yang.’ (While being a totally innocent phrase in itself, it sounds delightfully inappropriate if you wink weirdly enough.)
It also led to me getting a HOT americano on our way to a HOT hike OUTDOORS (in the HEAT), which is among the stupider things I’ve done.
Confession, for science: I relaxed on the ‘no refrigerated bevvies’ rule, because it’s a million degrees in Cincinnati. This was my one real failure, though, and I’ll work on it. At some point. Also, I very very reduced my raw produce intake, but it’s summer and tomatoes and cantaloupe are in season, sooooooo, um, all things in moderation?
Results? Well, it takes about three months for your hormones to shift around; they’re a stubborn bunch, and usually set in their ways. This is generally a good thing; you wouldn’t want to be too influenced by changes in your environment. So, you know, I’ll report back in eight weeks, assuming I manage to stick to most of these practices.
However, I did notice that my ridiculously-low BBT temps this cycle were a tenth of a degree higher than they were last cycle. So. Maybe that’s something? I also INSTANTLY lost a ton of stubborn weight, which was an unintended but nice perk. (Don’t worry, I’ve since gained it all back for no discernable reason. My body is hilarious.)
From a bio-amateur such as myself, it does make some DEGREE of sense that cold body temperatures could adversely affect conception and pregnancy. As we have discussed previously, a lot of factors have to go right for pregnancy to happen. It seems plausible that if the environment is too chilly, there could be issues with conception, implantation, etc. A bun in the oven only cooks if the oven is hot.
This has been a TedTalk.
HERE’S THE FUN PART:
I’d hazard a guess that the whole running cold/Yang deficiency thing isn’t just me. Scientific American reports that both men and women are running about a degree colder now than we were (as a species) in centuries past. (That article goes on to posit that this may be because of “a decline in infectious diseases”. LOL, January.)
I’d be curious to hear, from those who feel comfortable sharing: Do you also run cooler than average? Ladies? Gents? (Bueller?)
(I should note to sum this up that I also found tons of women in online fertility forums who did conceive with a lower than normal temp, so, what on earth do I know.)
Anyway. I think, after writing this up, I might have convinced myself to give hot-drinks-only another try. Brb, off to boil some LaCroix.
NEXT WEEK, join us for the first in an ongoing series about BBT Chart Optimization. So many graphs! So many decimal points! So much opportunity for FUN!
AFTER THAT, we’ll be doing our first Corgan Family Update. We are more than our infertility, and we have a great life in most respects. Periodically, we’ll talk about some of that other stuff on here as well :) We’ll also share some of the resources you guys have shared with us, so, stay tuned!
DISCLAIMER #3: I’d like to say that I strove to write about TCM and Chinese culture as respectfully as possible–and will do so going forward. However, it’s also important to me to keep the tone of these pieces irreverent and fun, because otherwise this would be a very sad series. If I said something inappropriate while attempting to toe that line, or made a joke that I shouldn’t have, please let me know, and I’ll get rid of it/apologize/re-broadcast. Thanks!
References not linked above:
https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/tcm-basics-%E2%80%93-food/eystcmoverview4.html
https://julesbogdanski.com/optimizing-fertility-part-ii-analyzing-bbt-chart-follicular-phase/