Ep. 161: A restorative reproductive physician's top Women's Health supplements, with Dr. Amy Hogan

Dr. Amy Hogan has been in the women's health field for many years and strives to optimize and preserve female fertility through a holistic approach and restorative, NaProTechnology focused care. She joins us on the podcast to share her recommendations for the TOP supplements she recommends for women's health. She doesn't just give us names, she explains why they are so critical to balancing hormones, optimal quality of life, and more -- and shares some fascinating research studies along the way! If you're looking to narrow down the number of supplements you need to take for women's health needs, this episode is for you! 

GUEST BIO: 

Dr. Hogan was born and raised in rural Kansas. She earned a bachelor's degree in Nutrition Science from Kansas State University. Dr. Hogan graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2003 with special honors in endocrinology. She completed residency at Via Christi Family Medicine in Wichita, KS. During that time she also became a Creighton Model FertilityCare Medical Consultant. After 15 years of medical experience, she founded One Body Family and Fertility Clinic, LLC.

NOTE: Episode is appropriate for all audiences. 

Show Notes: 

• Prostaglandin Study PubMed article referenced

Other episodes you may enjoy!:

• Ep.16: PMS 101
• Ep.39: Should I be taking Supplements?
• Ep. 134: Realistic cycle syncing for every woman, with Megan Faller

Transcript

Caitlin (00:25)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. Which supplements are best for women's health and fertility? It's a great question, but one that can be pretty overwhelming. Maybe a more helpful way to approach it could be which three supplements are worth my time, my commitment, my money. So we have previous episodes on supplements that we'll be sure to link in the show notes, but I wanted to bring in a restorative reproductive medical professional trained in NAPRO technology.

to give her view on which three supplements are vital for women's health and wellness. So today we're being joined by Dr. Amy Hogan from One Body Family and Fertility Clinic located in Kansas. Dr. Hogan was born and raised there in Kansas where she received her bachelor's in nutrition science and then graduated from medical school with special honors in endocrinology. She's a Creighton Model Fertility Care Medical Consultant and offers primary care and women's hormone and wellness support through her clinic.

Dr. Hogan, welcome to the show.

Amy Hogan, MD (01:25)
Thank you, very glad to be here. We're always happy to work with you, Caitlin.

Caitlin (01:30)
Well, I feel the same way. have a lot of clients who have worked with you over the years and just rave. So it's really glad, I'm really glad to have you on the show, be able to talk about this issue specifically because it can be overwhelming. I think there are probably 20 supplements that are technically good to be taking as a woman of reproductive years. So what do you feel like are those key supplements that are worth taking?

Amy Hogan, MD (01:59)
There's so many and you're right sometimes I'll have women that come in and they'll be on five ten fifteen different things if you piece about all their different little vitamins and all the different ingredients in the vitamins So we're just focus in on three today and they may not be the perfect three but there are three that are really worth taking a look at because The literature and the science is showing that they do have some increased help for helping get a woman to get and stay pregnant

Caitlin (02:26)
Okay, great, can't wait to hear them.

Amy Hogan, MD (02:27)
So yeah, our first one we're going to talk about today is magnesium. So that's one of my favorites. It's so good. It has 300 different reasons to use magnesium, the body, the brain, the muscles. And in this case, the uterine lining is important to us and magnesium is calming. So to become pregnant, actually

Caitlin (02:33)
Mm.

Amy Hogan, MD (02:51)
They say that people who are uptight or worried or frustrated or anxious, it's harder to become pregnant. So number one, it can calm the brain. So that's really invaluable. It's amazing to have a calmer mood, a calmer countenance. And there's even magnesiums that have on the label, calm magnesium. How do we help the person to be calmer in all the different parts of their body? So magnesium has been a favorite for a lot of years. so starting out, there are a lot of people who have

tramps, especially during the first part of the menses. And it's been known that magnesium as a supplement is calming to smooth muscles. So it can even lower the blood pressure. If the blood pressure is high, the smooth muscles around the arteries. So every blood vessel that you have has a little bit of muscle around it. Just calming that down can lower the blood pressure. So a little bit of an amazing thing there. But in general, your uterus is also a smooth muscle.

And so to be able to have that not cramp up is not only valuable for decreasing the pain, but also if you're trying to become pregnant, helping that uterine muscle to be calm and relaxed and to be able to have everything it needs to stay relaxed for nine whole months. And magnesium is a supplement that many women in pregnancy definitely need. I've had women who tell me that, that they were doing fine, but when they got pregnant, they're

Caitlin (03:52)
That's a good point.

Amy Hogan, MD (04:19)
they start having leg cramps and charley horses at night, it's because that need for magnesium goes up when you're building babies. very important. so for number one, it can help decrease the cramps.

Everyone would like that, right? And number two, it can help you sleep better, have a better mood. And number three, helping to calm the entire uterus down.

Caitlin (04:44)
Well, those are great. And I'm thinking, you you mentioned that these are the three that you're going to talk about are good for pregnancy, but those sound really great for any woman of reproductive

not have cramps and to be calmer, be able to sleep better and those sort of things. Those are, those are great for all of us. We all need that.

Amy Hogan, MD (05:01)
Yes, ma'am.

sometimes people want to know about what form of magnesium is the best one to take because there's lots of different versions on the counter. So the two that I go to the most are magnesium citrate and then also magnesium glycinate. The reason I go for those is because they're usually better tolerated by the stomach and also very absorbable. I even like my magnesium citrate in a powder and that way you can titrate it up little at a time to make sure that your bowels and your stomach still

function well and that you're not having too much stomach upset or a looser stool with that. So magnesium, definitely a mover and a shaker and a great choice for when you're seeking pregnancy or even just having a better menstrual cycle, less cramps and feeling better mentally.

Caitlin (05:48)
That's a great one to start on. And I really appreciate you talking about the different forms of it because I do see a lot about that out there. Like, there's so many different types of magnesium that you can take. And I think it could be, we're talking about being overwhelming. It can be overwhelming to even know where to start. So having two forms of it that we could play around with and see how it improves our symptoms and potentially helps to conceive a pregnancy are great.

Amy Hogan, MD (06:15)
Mm-hmm. The second one up to bat was the fish oil. And I'm a midwesterner. I know you have probably listeners from all over the US. And so some of our girls on the coast may be a little less necessary to listen to this one, but us girls in the middle of the country really are low in omega-3 fatty acids. And omega-3s have long been considered awesome for heart health or lowering cholesterol.

but it's partly because they're a great fatty acid that's anti-inflammatory. So in the end game, I think that we're going to find out that coronary artery disease and a lot of the diseases that affected people chronically, that the name of the game is going to be anti-inflammation. That something that inflamed them got the arteries or the body excited, and then that body was responding to the nidus of the inflammation to calm down.

and to, you know, had to make an inflammatory response and that inflammatory response caused the disease like the coronary artery disease. So when we're seeking pregnancy, we want everything to be calm, calm, calm also. We also want the best of the best of fatty acids because we're going to be building tissues. So fatty acids are necessary for building tissues and building a

a lot of the prenatal vitamins now include omega-3s for that very reason.

that building brain and building eyes and building neurons takes necessary fatty acids and omega-3s are awesome for

anti-inflammation, let's go back to that for just a second. Having inflammation in the cycle, that could lead to prostaglandins that then leads to more pain. So we've kind of touched on two supplements today that are very good for girls who are experiencing dysmenorrhea or painful periods. And so if possible,

those two together might actually do a world of good for someone who's dealing with painful cycles already. But then you also have to say, okay, what else will that anti-inflammation affect? So allowing the body to be calmer, to not raise excitement in the immune system. We just like things to be as smooth and as calm as possible while we're seeking pregnancy. And again, just the fact that we are trying to allow the body

to make way for the next right step, which is hopefully implantation of baby and allowing the inflammation to be lower allows the pregnancy to actually progress and to be hopefully more successful.

So on PubMed, found a really great, was on gynecological survey medicine way back in 2004, but it was saying that it is helping with lowering the ratio of prostaglandin to thomboxane. And so that can facilitate pregnancy or women who are dealing with infertility due to uterine blood flow. It's like, it's helping lots of ways. For example, one of my old

friends who did perinatology, he would say, if you do an aspirin a day, that could lower this same ratio too, and would jump over lot of hurdles. Well, guess what? Omega-3s are much safer than aspirin. And not that aspirin is terrible, but it's an interesting aside that they're seeing that people who are on omega-3s get and stay pregnant better. And they're hypothesizing that it's because of this lower prostaglandin to throboxane ratio. So that's really exciting.

Caitlin (09:46)
Wow,

Amy Hogan, MD (09:47)
Yeah.

Caitlin (09:48)
that is exciting. And it just, it goes back to the reminder. You know, we talk about this on the show that your overall reproductive health matters even when you're not trying to conceive. So it's important to be taking something like omega-3s for your overall health and you'll hopefully feel better and you'll have the energy and everything that you need to create those tissues, but also,

reducing the pain with periods so your quality of life is improved. And then when you are ready to conceive, it's just that natural transition. You've already been working to prepare that lining and to help the egg be really healthy and ready to go. So that's fantastic. That's a really good suggestion.

Amy Hogan, MD (10:34)
Yes. Another couple of quips if you weren't already excited about omega-3s is that omega-3s might help prevent preeclampsia. In other words,

a problem in pregnancy where people get higher blood pressure and then maybe even the worst of the worst in eclampsia go on to seizures. It may help prevent that, which is awesome. Postpartum depression. Again, we talked about mood, but the brain of the woman is also important.

So that's another thing that they say might be bettered by keeping your omega-3s up. Also decreasing some risk of some breast cancers. Again, probably because cancers start with inflammation. So keeping the inflammation down, we might be able to see that there's an improved outcome.

Caitlin (11:19)
That's great, that's fantastic. I especially love to hear being able to prevent cancer. mean, these are things that not only affect us now in this moment, but 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the line. And anything we can be doing now to invest in our future health is worth it too.

Amy Hogan, MD (11:36)
Definitely, totally agree. So yeah. vitamin D as in dog, it's an amazing hormone. People always call it a vitamin, but it's actually a hormone. And so it does do a lot for us in the area of our hormones. And if it's not right,

Caitlin (11:38)
Okay, we've got one more. What's that third one? I'm curious.

Amy Hogan, MD (11:56)
It will then mean that we're not going to have our hormone cascade in line, which means that we're going to have a lower values in those end result products and therefore less fertile, less healthy. Other parts. So vitamin D great for the bones. If people have a known history of low bone in their families, so osteoporosis or osteopenia, most women can tolerate 2000 IU to 5000 IU a day. And if you're breastfeeding, you probably need at least that.

because you're making milk which is full of vitamin D and is hopefully bioavailable to the baby and so you're giving a lot of it away. So both in pre-conception health during the time of pregnancy, during the time of breastfeeding, vitamin D is super important for all of those times. vitamin D, We love it so much. It helps the immune system. So it's about

kind of regulating instead of just having an immune system be fight, fight, fight. It actually reigns in the immune system, which again is exactly what we need in pre pregnancy because you don't want something that's too excited, but just right. so vitamin D is one of those hormone chemicals that helps the immune system to be regulated, not just super fight or flight, but perfect right in the middle. So a certain perfect level, a lot of different

folks are saying at least 30 on the, if you're gonna get your vitamin D level checked, it's kind of weird because some insurances don't wanna check it. It might be worth it to go find a place that will check it, that you can find an online way to check it because strangely it's so important, but so under looked at. I like to see my vitamin D levels right around 50. So 50 to 100 being ideal in my clinic.

because again, we're shooting for an end result, which is you being as happy, as healthy as possible, your fertility being happy and healthy as possible, and all of your hormones being perfectly aligned so that we can help you get and stay pregnant. So vitamin D, what's not to love? Aside from that, like I said, it is helpful for the bones. you don't take any milk products or you're known to have low bone in your family, it'd be a great choice if you live in a really cold.

know, climate where you don't see the sun very often. Even in Midwest here in Kansas, they say that you'd have to lay out in the sun for 15 to 20 minutes, you know, a day, every day to get enough of the vitamin D. So in the middle of the winter, I always tell my girls definitely between October to April, it might be good to go up on it just a little bit. The only downside would be is if you had kidney failure or kidney disease.

Or if you had known high calcium, which there are people out there that have known high calcium, we don't want to tempt the body to take more calcium. Vitamin D helps us to get and store calcium from the GI tract. So again, if you had super high calcium or you knew that that was a problem for you, you definitely wouldn't add a high dose vitamin D.

Caitlin (15:00)
Well, and you bring up a lot of good points here about the health things to keep in mind whenever you're deciding which supplements to take. obviously supplements are available over the counter, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily talk with our doctors. But you you often hear like, consult with your doctor first and you don't know, do you really need to ask your doctor or are they just saying that to sort of cover themselves like...

How important is it to talk with your doctor about supplements that you're considering?

Amy Hogan, MD (15:31)
I think it's a great choice because especially if your doctor is really involved with your fertility care, and we hope they all are, good for us to know exactly what the supplements are so that we don't add something that would interact badly or that we don't suggest something that you're already taking. We want it to be to go together and to work with your system, not just load you and keep loading on another pill or another supplement. So definitely talk to your doctor. The things that we talked about today are pretty safe.

Caitlin (15:38)
Yes.

Amy Hogan, MD (16:01)
Most women could probably take them without having to do a full consult. But again, if you're going to have other things added on or you're doing some fertility care, it's very important to disclose everything.

Caitlin (16:14)
Well, and I agree with you, even though these are safe, in an ideal world, you would have a medical professional that you're partnering with, that is following your care and really investing in you from beginning to you want someone who is aware of everything you're taking and also who can help you manage it.

You mentioned at the very beginning that sometimes you can have patients who come in and they're taking 20 supplements. I definitely have clients that I work with who tell me they're taking 20 supplements, and we know that's not sustainable long-term. So trying to figure out which ones are going to be best for any individual person is really important and worth it.

Amy Hogan, MD (16:56)
Right, right, right. So yeah, we just decided to pick out three of my favorites today and I'm sure glad we did. It's been super fun to talk about them.

Caitlin (17:05)
Yes, thanks so much for being on the show. We really appreciate you sharing of your time and experience with us.

Amy Hogan, MD (17:12)
Absolutely.

Caitlin (17:14)
Listeners, I'll be sure to have previous episodes on supplements linked in the show notes so you can hear a little bit more about supplements and some other options that could be helpful for women's health and fertility. And if you'd like some other free resources, you've come to the right place. We have resources on our website at wovenfertility.com that are totally free for your use. There are lots of downloads available about the biggest questions and of course,

Each podcast episode here is free for you to enjoy as well. If you'd like to learn more about the Creighton model system or NAPRO technology, you may be interested in joining our upcoming introductory session to learn about both. We'll make sure to have a link in the show notes to see our upcoming dates. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.