Today we're talking about one of the most overlooked factors in reproductive health,

and that's stress. When stress becomes chronic, it changes how our hormones function.

If somebody tells you that, oh, stress doesn't impact fertility. Of course it can.

It's not ovarian failure, but it's all because of the brain interpreting what is going on.

If you see a bear, your body is going to shift its response in order to allow you to

run from the bear. It's causing inflammation. This is what's happening to the brain before

everything gets shut off completely, but you might miss these red flag warning signs.

Welcome back to the As a Woman podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Natalie Crawford, and today we're talking about one of the most overlooked factors in reproductive health, and that's stress.

We live in a world that constantly demands more of us, more productivity, more energy, more resilience.

And while our minds may adapt, our bodies often pay the price. When

stress becomes chronic, it changes how our hormones function, affects our menstrual cycles, and can

even make it harder to get pregnant. In this episode, we're going to cover how the stress response

system actually works and why it's tightly linked to your hormones. The way chronic stress impacts

our ovulation, egg quality, and fertility

outcomes. And most importantly, what you can do to reduce the effects and restore hormonal balance

if you've ever been told, just relax or it will happen. This is the episode that will help you

understand what stress is really doing inside your body and how you can take back control.

Well, friends, thank you so much for being here today. And this is a topic that I am talking about to all of my patients right now and getting so many questions on. And it's interesting how often people actually get dismissed if they bring this up to their doctor. And they really are told, just relax or don't stress about it, or that infertility or trying to get pregnant is just inherently stressful. And that might be true. It is stressful to go through infertility. I had

multiple pregnancy losses. I know what it's like to be on that side of the table and truly feel

the stress that comes when every month isn't ending the way you want it to. But that doesn't

mean that our world is not

inherently stressful and that we don't need to think about what is happening inside our body

...