Keeping your body warm in general ensures that your blood vessels remain dilated to promote good flow, your muscles stay relaxed, and your immune system isn’t over activated. Chronic cold exposure, whether from exposed toes, walking on bare floors, sitting under the AC vent at your work space 40+ hours a week, swimming in cold water, or opting for cute over weather-appropriate clothing can all, over time, lead to chronic muscle tension, constricted blood vessels, and over active immune activity as your body attempts to maintain your core temperature.
Chronic cold exposure is especially impactful for fertility as hormone signaling and proper blood circulation are imperative for regulating your menstrual cycle. Staying warm in general is ideal, focusing on the following practices can help counteract regular cold exposure.
Nightly Abdominal Heat
Using a non-electric heat source, apply warmth to your lower belly for 20 minutes every night during your follicular phase (period until ovulation). Following ovulation you can still apply heat but it should be no more intense then the warmth of a cat laying on your belly .
Warming your lower abdomen helps increase blood for to your reproductive organs, making the communication between your brain and your ovaries more efficient.
Keep Your Feet Warm
The blood that is circulating through your feet is the farthest away from your heart that you can get and must travel against gravity to make its way back your heart and lungs for reoxygenation. When your feet are cold, the blood vessels in them constrict, as does the surrounding muscle and connective tissue. This makes your veins narrower and the muscles and fascia that surround them tenser and even more constricting to upward blood flow. This decreased circulation in your feet can cause reduced circulation in the rest of your body, including the femoral blood vessels which are a major thoroughfaire for systemic circulation.
Within the sole of your foot is a thick band of connective tissue called the plantar fascia. This band of fascia is part of a continuous chain of fascia that travels up the back of your body from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head and over your forehead to connect with the fascia around your eyes.
Like everything else in nature, when exposed to cold the fascia in your feet constricts and tightens creating tension along the back of your body all the way up to your eyes which can contribute to tension in your back and neck and headaches.
What about Earthing?
Putting your feet directly on the Earth can reduce inflammation, improve sleep quality, lower stress and anxiety, boost mood and energy, support cardiovascular health, improve immune function, speed healing, and stabilize blood sugar and hormones.
All things that will contribute to improved fertility!
But that doesn’t mean that having chronically cold feet isn’t also problematic in terms of your long term health in general and your fertility specifically.
So save Earthing for warm days, make sure you heat up your feet with cozy socks or a nice hot foot soak after cold exposure, and keep your feet covered when you’re not specifically trying to commune with the Earth’s healing powers. 🧝♀️
Keep Your Lower Back and Lower Abdomen Warm
Are you sensing a theme? Your lower back and belly are another key area to keep warm. In addition to helping maintain blood flow through your pelvic and abdominal organs, you’ll also be protecting acupuncture points and channels that specifically relate to fertility.
Keep Your Neck Warm
Your neck is the passageway between your brain and the rest of your body. It’s a passageway for blood, lymph, nerves… and the hormones that your brain makes that must reach your ovaries to stimulate follicular development and the estrogen that your ovaries make that trigger the LH surge from your brain.