Revolutionizing Fertility Care: The Kindbody Holistic and Empathetic Approach with Dr. Lynn Westphal

Discover how Dr. Lynn Westphal,  CMO of Kindbody, and Stanford University luminary, is transforming fertility care through innovation and empathy. Our revealing conversation uncovers the groundbreaking Kindbody Institute, where Dr. Westphal's expertise empowers gynecologists with the skills to tackle the increasing demand for reproductive specialists. The pioneering training program promises not just to fill a vital gap in healthcare but also offers patients a future where their wait for fertility assistance is dramatically shortened.

Step into the world of holistic fertility care where it's not just about the medical treatments, but a journey that nurtures both mind and body. The "Kindbody Way" champions a supportive, multidisciplinary approach that places immense value on emotional well-being, including therapeutic practices like acupuncture and the wisdom of natural medicine. Tailoring treatment plans to individual needs, Dr. Westphal and I address the critical importance of comprehensive care standards and timely fertility evaluations, fostering a harmonious alliance between reproductive health specialists and the wider healthcare network.

Embark on a personalized path to fertility that recognizes the uniqueness of your health journey. Here, we highlight practical steps, from managing lifestyle factors to embracing stress reduction techniques, and the significance of informed choices in everyday life. Our episode guides you through the resources at your disposal, such as our Fertility Quiz and expert-driven Fertility Assessment Calls, ensuring you're equipped with not only knowledge but also an unwavering support system. Join the conversation that seeks to empower you through every heartbeat of your fertility journey.

Connect with Kindbody:

Instagram - @Kindbody

https://kindbody.com/team/dr-lynn-westphal/

https://kindbody.com/employer-benefits/

https://www.reproductivefacts.org/?_gl=1*5gai1f*_ga*MTA2MjY4MDAyMC4xNzA0MzE4Nzcx*_ga_T403PGFCFZ*MTcwNDMxODc3MS4xLjAuMTcwNDMxODc3MS42MC4wLjA.&_ga=2.149250294.1122736683.1704318771-1062680020.1704318771

https://resolve.org/

Take the fertility quiz: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/fertility-quiz

Schedule a Fertile Health Assessment: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/your-fertile-health-call

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.susan.fox/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to Health University, the online classroom and podcast dedicated to empowering women and couples on their fertility, pregnancy, perimenopause and emotional relationships journeys. I'm Dr Susan Fox, a women's health expert with over 20 years of experience in helping women and couples navigate fertility challenges and heal their whole health and reproductive health With compassion, clarity and practical tips. Our podcast episodes provide a wealth of information tailored to your unique needs. We're passionate about helping you understand your own body and its connection to mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. I'd be honored if you would help me by taking a moment to rate and review our podcast on iTunes. Your positive feedback helps us reach more listeners who can benefit from our empowering and educational approach to fertility and holistic wellness.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Health University, where I have the good fortune and pleasure of introducing Dr Lynn Westfall. Dr Westfall is not only the CMO Chief Medical Officer of Kind Body, an amazing group of IVF centers across the country. Is it internationally yet? I don't know. It's just in the US at the moment Okay, that's right. And Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.

Speaker 1: 1:34

So she brings a wealth of information from just her time in the field and then her expansive body of knowledge, and I'm so grateful that you took the time to speak with us today, dr Westfall. Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you, my pleasure. I got excited and reached out to you because I had heard about kind body developing, the kind body institute, which I'm going to ask for you to first introduce yourself, if there's anything that I missed, but also give us an explanation of what is kind body institute, because it is avant garde as far as I'm concerned. I've not seen this occur anywhere else in the field and I think it's very exciting. So please share with us a little bit more about yourself, if I missed anything, and then about kind body institute, and we'll just kind of riff from there.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Thank you. I'm a obstetrician, gynecologist and a chronologist and practiced at Stanford for over 20 years and then retired from Stanford, so I still have like an academic appointment there and then became the chief medical officer at kind body and one of the reasons why I was interested in joining kind body is that, you know, as a new company could think about providing care and improving access to care in ways that are difficult to do in a really big institution. And the kind institute for training gynecologists to help with fertility procedures I think is one of these novel things that we're able to do. So there are training programs, three year fellowships for respect venecronology, but there aren't enough training spots for all the physicians that we need to do fertility services.

Speaker 2: 3:29

And you know, over the years we've had advanced practice practitioners who have been helping also in the field, and then there were gynecologists who were trained, sometimes in small clinics to assist with some of the reproductive endocrinologists, but there hasn't been any really formal training for these gynecologists who are interested. And you know, every year there are gynecologists who sometimes don't get into a fellowship or have an interest in learning fertility and have practiced for a while and want to learn some new skills and just focus on the fertility space. So this program is a formal program that we're doing at several of our centers. There's extensive didactics and then every gynecologist has a mentor who works with them to make sure that they're able to do retrievals and transfers. By the time they've completed their training they've usually done more retrievals or transfers than someone would have done in a fellowship. They're very well trained to assist the reproductive endocrinologist.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Beautiful. Oftentimes these gynecologists are the first line, if you will, of a woman inquiring I'm having some difficulty. What do I do To be able to get some real hands-on and immediate response? I think becomes a relief to the woman, to the person who's inquiring, because otherwise that person can be saying, okay, I'm having trouble, and then be referred out and depending upon the wait list, it can take some time where that person may feel I'm going to use the term she does not have that much time. So having being able to get started in these processes, I think is only going to be a relief for everybody. Do you envision these gynecologists once they're trained and graduated? Will they be using the kind body clinics, if you will, for their procedures or will they have these procedures in their own private practices?

Speaker 2: 5:47

So these gynecologists were training to work with the reproductive endocrinologists in their clinic. So wherever they're trained, they will be staying and being part of the fertility team Beautiful.

Speaker 1: 6:01

So retrievals et cetera will continue, will be in the physical location of the kind body for that clinic. That's rightful.

Speaker 2: 6:09

So all the care, the management, is still overseen by the reproductive endocrinologists, but then this allows the reproductive endocrinologist to focus more on the more complex things and then the gynecologist can help with the procedures in the clinic and to help get more patients in.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Right. So REI will do more case management, if you will, and kind of mentor and review, make recommendations for what procedures and in what order and so forth. That's fantastic. And has it rolled out? I saw the announcements and, as I said, got very excited. So has it rolled out and, if so, in which clinics? So which area of the country can folks plan to get to right away?

Speaker 2: 6:59

Yeah, so the first cohort is just completing their training. So we had someone in New York who already had been doing. She had worked in a practice where she had already done thousands of retrievals and transfers, so it was just kind of getting her into the kind body way. And then we have a gynecologist in San Francisco who is an amazing surgeon. So she is, you know, minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon, you know someone who can handle any complicated surgical procedure, and so she's been finishing her training. And then there are a couple of people in Chicago who are finishing their training. That's wonderful.

Speaker 1: 7:48

And is it, how long is the? What is the duration for the training for this mentorship? Six well, a minimum of six months, of course, depending upon their level of expertise when they come in. Yeah, that's wonderful. And how do you expect this to you know how many clinics does the kind body group have?

Speaker 2: 8:09

So we have 32 right now and we're adding a few in the next few months, so it should be up to 35, 36. That's amazing.

Speaker 1: 8:22

That's amazing and for the listening audience. Talk to Westfall. As I said, is the chief medical officer, and so therefore, do I understand it correctly that you are licensed in every state in the country? Yes, yes, I have. I must have been quite an undertaking and quite an administrative upkeep to just keep those licenses going.

Speaker 2: 8:43

Yeah, yeah, 51 medical licenses, so all states and then DC is a separate license. Okay, that's amazing. Yeah, it does take time to keep up because different states have different regulations. You know the CME requirements. It does take some time.

Speaker 1: 9:02

You can own your own EA just to manage to make sure that your licenses are up to date, because I'm sure they're not all renewing at the same date. Right, it's like having a perpetually rolling tax year, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:16

And somewhere every year, somewhere every other year and they're different times. But it's been really kind of fun for me to see and meet people all over the country and there are differences in the patient populations and just their expectations and some areas where I'm talking to people they're so far away from any medical care that just getting like basic testing and things like that ordered can be difficult.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Yeah, wow, and you mentioned the phrase the kind body way, and I know that that's a phrase that I've heard before, but and I'd like to make sure the listening audience understands, what does that mean in kind body? What is the kind body way?

Speaker 2: 10:03

We need to try to have standardized protocols across all the clinics. So we have very extensive protocols that people can look at for any type of procedure or any type of situation that may come up, and so we revise these as needed. We are always trying to have them with the most up to date recommendations and this way it's just a good resource for people.

Speaker 1: 10:35

We know that everyone's following similar protocols Beautiful, so it's standard operating procedures for the procedures themselves, but maybe I was making it up. It seems to me that kind body as a way also is more embracing and inclusive of ancillary cares, psychotherapeutic myself, natural medicine support, so that your patients are really not feeling like they're getting a divide and conquer or being told to stay away for three months while I go give you these herbs, which only creates stress for everybody. I love the fact that kind body, as an institution from the get go, has been saying this is a need that can be met with a variety of inputs and I really appreciate that, unlike others that are saying, oh no, anything other than what we're doing is of concern. Let's put it that way because they're variables that that doc may not understand or know what to do with, but the intention and the mission seems to be that kind body has been embracing the holistic approach to patient wellness.

Speaker 2: 11:49

Yeah, absolutely. We know that a lot of patients drop out of care because they find it so difficult from, like, an emotional standpoint. So anything that can help the patient feel supported as they're going through the process, we totally embrace, because we want people to be able to build their families and everyone approaches it differently. Some people want to move more slowly, some people just want to jump right in, and so we want to make sure that we're tailoring their treatment to what feels comfortable for them and also that they're doing whatever other treatments that they think will help them through the process. So, like acupuncture is something that a lot of patients find that they feel so much better when they're doing it. Some of my patients who've been really nervous and stressed they're like, oh, I have the best nap or I feel so refreshed after I have my acupuncture, and those types of things are so important. They just help the patients get through the process. So anything that makes them feel better, we absolutely embrace.

Speaker 1: 13:12

I will just speak for myself in working with all of my patients, but I'm thinking in mind of specific kind body patients who I have had the pleasure of supporting. Sometimes it's simply translating, because we have the time to sit and say, oh, this is what you're doing, this is what's happening, and then you can just watch the cortisol levels drop as they begin to comprehend oh, I can understand this and therefore I can engage with it and therefore I'm not as stressed. And then, therefore, with my acupuncture treatment, I am getting better blood flow to ovaries and uterus, as we're doing the protocol that are designed to do just that. And we're also, then, talking about the lifestyle medicine that helps this person just improve her life and their whole health. And then, therefore, the reproductive health, because if we're either delivering what I jokingly refer to as Twinkie blood or we're directing nutrient dense blood flow to the tissues and the organs at hand, so yeah, that's wonderful, that's wonderful.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Yeah, and I think it's nice for the patients to have some other perspectives too. And right, the way that you explain things may be a little bit different than the way I explain them Right, and patients sometimes will find that hearing it different ways, you know, than they're able to understand them Absolutely, and it resonates a little better Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Are there any? Let us use the term cautionary you know details or messages you would like to give the person out there listening to say you know, before you or as you plan to, you know, come into a kind body or make your first kind body appointment? You might want to consider ABC first, or is it just give us a call and we'll help you out from the get go?

Speaker 2: 15:04

Well, I think making that call or appointment is often, you know, a bit of a big step to take, but I think that's probably the most important thing. You know, just go in, find out. You know your basic fertility, you know I. There are patients who sometimes, you know, think they need to do all this preparation in advance. But you know there could be some other factor that's, you know, really important. So you don't want to lose time. I think that's the one thing that I was hoping to hear you say. I would caution people. Sometimes, you know, there are people like, oh, I've been like, you know, trying to prepare and be as healthy as possible for the last five years, and you know, and now they're 45. And you know it. I mean, that's all great, but you know, time is going to become an issue. So, you know, even if you're not planning to do anything initially, it's good to find out if there's some other factors that maybe need to be addressed.

Speaker 1: 16:12

I couldn't agree more. And then that was. There was actually a little bit of a prompt, because I was hoping to hear you say that. Because you know we, who are, as you well know, you know fellows of the acupuncture and TCM board of reproductive medicine, are on the same page. You know we're not the ones saying give us six months to a year to get you ready, because we know that window may be the critical window and you know, haven't forbid someone's getting you ready and there's a structural impediment.

Speaker 1: 16:42

And certainly if there, even if there's a physiological paradigm like a PCOS person, you know she they could really benefit from getting the numbers and getting the, you know, getting the markers in. We go to the doc for other markers. So the idea that we would wait and not go in and get our markers for our fertile health is it kind of breaks my heart sometimes when I see, when I have women come in and they've been, you know, doing the three, six to a year timeframe and I understand from their perspective they're afraid and all they needed to be told was it's okay, there's no, there's no harm in getting your baseline. You get your teeth checked every year.

Speaker 2: 17:25

So yeah, yeah, right, yeah, are you go in for your pap? Be great. And you know there's always the chance of finding something unexpected, and so I understand that I'm thinking a little bit scary to go in. But you know there's a lot of power in having this knowledge.

Speaker 1: 17:46

And most of most of in my observation in the last 23 years, most of what even might get uncovered that might feel scary can be remedied Like that's what the procedures are for, so that you're not you know, you're not saying uh-oh, why am I not menstruating, uh-oh, why do I have this terrible pain at either ovulation or menstruation?

Speaker 1: 18:07

If there's a reason, if there's a physical and physiological reason that can be attended to, so why suffer longer than is needed, especially when that timeframe, as you say, could be the window of opportunity that could, you know, bring their heart's desire.

Speaker 1: 18:25

The other thing that I would like to add for the listening public out there and I'm going to bet you agree with me is that one of my first questions is how many children do you want to have in your family when they're coming?

Speaker 1: 18:36

You know, when they don't have, you know one already, because you know if they want two or three, then there may be a real advantage to first getting your embryos, raising them, testing them, whatever, and then, even if you say you know, then I want to try naturally, well, go for it. Then you've got your insurance policy in the bank that you have embryos of age, we'll say 35, when you're 40. And so, and that is a better likelihood for a healthy pregnancy, do you have? Do you have see that kind of dilemma as well, where a woman has waited, has said, well, I'm just going to try this one time, and you know, then it takes some time and she gets pregnant, and then she's nursing, and then she's starting again, and that's when you know, then she has to go to donor eggs because her window is closed.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Absolutely. That's an important conversation to have early on and I, you know, see patients who are getting further into their 30s and they say they want to have two or three children Before they try. It does then make sense, you know, to free some embryos or eggs and then hopefully they'll get pregnant quickly. But then, you know, if they try to have their second or third in their 40s, then they have this as a backup. So it's really important for family planning to think about the age that you're starting and the age that you think that you're probably going to end, and if having something frozen in advance would help with that plan.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Couldn't agree more. The other factor, the variable, that has come well. Two of them have come in One the most recent change to the diagnosis for infertility, I think, has opened up a lot of opportunity for more people to have your services. The second point is that there are more companies, corporations, offering fertility benefits as part of their benefits package plan. So think about that, listeners. If this is something that you want as part of your life is to have a family, kind of think about getting lined up for that, so that you're not in the queue when you already feel like it's too late, because, truly, as much as you can take one ounce of stress away from the process by just getting things done in advance, it makes a world of difference.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Yeah, so hopefully more companies will start to add these benefits and if someone's at a company where they don't have a benefit, it's worthwhile to talk to the HR team to see if this is a benefit that they would think about adding. And we have found, because we're able to offer employers a pretty good rate for doing this, and it obviously produces a lot of employee satisfaction. So there are sometimes ways for employers to add these benefits.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Now again with outselling benefits, large insurance companies. They can go direct to you. Yes, yeah, so that's learned something today. I did not know that. I want to repeat that, if you don't mind, because I think that's key, because this is my field, and I did not know that Kindbody had a direct to company policy, if you will, or program so that that company doesn't have to go out to the big insurance companies and pay possibly big premiums and pay three times the retrieval. That's wonderful. Are there parameters? Should the listeners be thinking about companies over 50 employees or companies over 500 employees that Kindbody tends to work with?

Speaker 2: 22:27

Or so. We tend to work with bigger companies. They tend to be a little bit more interested in doing this too, and we tailor the benefit to what the employer wants. So, for example, our biggest employer is Walmart, and Walmart did not have a fertility benefit, but we were able to provide pretty cost effective benefit for them, and it's something that has been, I think, life changing for so many of these employees, and so the Walmart benefit is done similar to some of their other medical conditions, where you have to go to certain clinics, and so the Walmart employees do come to one of the Kindbody clinics for their care, but they do have a benefit to do that. Some employers, though, want to have even more flexibility, or if they have employees that live in an area not close to one of our clinics and they want to go to a different clinic, we do have partner clinics, too, so, depending on what the employer wants, we can make a package to help them.

Speaker 1: 23:43

That's beautiful. I presume that you probably don't want to be fielding all of these calls, so is there? Who might an HR benefits director reach out to at Kindbody to inquire more? Or is it just go on the website?

Speaker 2: 23:57

So if you go on the website, there actually is an area. If you're like an HR person, if you're interested in learning more, they just go to the website. They can just contact them.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Excellent, that's wonderful. Well, boy, I just learned something new. I love what I've learned something new. And here again, this is where I feel like I'm just raw, raw cheerleading. But this is not typical, at least in my observation now. Granted, I'm only in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I've been doing it for 23 years, and so I've been seeing a lot of the evolving of how reproductive medicine is being offered, and this seems, I'll repeat, avant-garde to me. Are you aware of any other company that is doing this?

Speaker 2: 24:42

Yeah, yeah, there's no other company that has clinics that contract directly with employers. And because we are all across the country, you know we're able to, you know be we're able to support most employees. That's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 25:02

What other thing would you suggest that again I'll use the term woman a woman or person do to prepare so that, by the time she's having her initial consult, you know your staff and your and your docs are not are feeling like they can make the most efficient use of their time on behalf of this person.

Speaker 2: 25:21

Well, so I think you know, in preparation for you know, any type of fertility treatment, whether you know doing IVF or doing ang-freezing we touched on this a little bit earlier you know, just to try to have as healthy of a lifestyle as possible. So you know, stop smoking, minimize alcohol, try to be a really healthy weight, exercise, all these things that are important just for long-term health and these are also things that are really important in pregnancy for having a healthy pregnancy. So you know in. So in this preparation, right, this is a good motivation to be as healthy as possible. And those are, you know, good habits to have. You know, forever, absolutely, yeah, and kind of correlated with that. You know doing the treatments. You know sometimes it's a little bit stressful. So finding ways to manage stress, you know everyone has kind of different ways of doing that and for my patients find that the acupuncture is a great way, but you know some people do meditation, or exactly take a walk with a friend or listen to a meditation.

Speaker 1: 26:39

Yes, it's, there are many, many ways to get there.

Speaker 1: 26:41

I actually just had a conversation shortly before we got on the phone together and the Zoom together about this preparation, and part of our conversation sort of expanded to things like yes, eat a healthy lifestyle, pay attention to your hydration, you know, get proper circulation, get could sleep cycles going so that you're, you know, all hormones are flowing along their circadian flow.

Speaker 1: 27:07

But also pay attention to the clothing that you're choosing and the personal care products that you're choosing, because there are a lot of environmental let's put a hormone disrupting environmental toxins in wrinkle resistant or water resistant clothing or stain resistant clothing or the gel nails you're putting on your fingers or things like that, and I don't know, I can't say for certain that you know that's going to be the impediment, but I guess my argument would be take away as many of these toxins as possible and you're going to improve egg quality, because at the end of the day, while egg quantity can infer egg quality, it is not. There's not an equal sign there, and egg quality is something that a person can actually make changes to lifestyle to improve or likely improve. Here again, there are no guarantees in life period, but the logic is there and the science is there that you know we really kind of are what we eat and how we live.

Speaker 2: 28:10

Right. So you definitely well, you definitely can make your quality worse If you have a healthy lifestyle, you're eating well, you know you're at a healthy weight. Unfortunately, there's nothing that can like really supercharge your fertility, but you know, just being as healthy as possible is the most that you can do. What? And the other factor, though, is just age, as we mentioned earlier. So, overall, the best predictor of quality is age. So, even if you have a healthy lifestyle we know that you know, as you get further into your 40s, you could be the healthiest person in the world, but the quality is going to exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:57

Exactly as we know, by healthy 40 year old.

Speaker 2: 28:59

but you're, you know, like your reserve Right so you can feel still very fertile. But we know by the time women are 40, over half of the eggs are already chromosomeally abnormal. There's nothing that you can do to change that. Those you know.

Speaker 1: 29:16

basic, basic biology, Biology, nature in life. Yes, for sure, For sure. Well, I want to be respectful of your time and the listener's time that before we wrap up, is there anything that I didn't ask about that you would say oh, these folks need to know this before before I sign off.

Speaker 2: 29:35

So one other thing that maybe can help reduce the stress is just to know what your benefits are. So you know, look to see if you have coverage. The unfortunate thing is that it varies from state to state. So there are some states that have good coverage, some states that have none and, like in California, it's really variable, depends on the employer. So there's some employers that add a fertility benefit and some that don't. But you know, knowing and understanding your fertility benefits I think then helps as you go through the process. And the other resource that I would recommend for people who may need financial assistance the Resolve website has a list of grants and there's some that are national, like BabyQuest, and then there's some grants that are just focused for certain states or certain populations. So I would definitely look at the Resolve website.

Speaker 1: 30:45

Okay, I'll put all of this in the show notes, so, listeners, if you're interested, look to the show notes and I'll have links to the Resolve site and things like that, as well as the kind body site for the HR directors who want to reach out to you directly, and then also ASRM, which is our professional organization, has information for patients too, and that is a very trusted resource.

Speaker 2: 31:10

I would recommend that people not count down Dr Google for answering their fertility questions, because, thank you, there's just a lot of misinformation on the internet, so I would use interest or there's social groups or the so-called support group that can become.

Speaker 1: 31:31

They can be wonderful or they can become a rabbit hole. Yes, so yes, go to a trusted authority. And the ASRM stands for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, so once again, I'll put that in the show notes as well. Right, thank you. Thank you Well, dr Westphal. Thank you again so much for taking this time. I know, with 35 clinics, you're a busy gal, so I really appreciate you taking some time to speak with us today and I hope it's wonderful about you.

Speaker 2: 31:59

Yes, it's wonderful that you do this.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Yeah well, thank you. I hope to get you back for a do-over or an update at some point in the future. Any time my best listeners, the End Music. Well, you heard the bell. Class is dismissed.

Speaker 1: 32:19

Your health journey is unique and I'm here to support you every step of the way To continue your progress. Here are a few pieces of homework for you. One take the your Fertility Quiz at yourfertilityquizcom. Discover your personalized solutions by answering just a few simple questions. It's a great way to gain insight into your health needs and find the next steps to achieve your goals. Two schedule a Fertility Assessment Call. Connect with our team of experts through a brief personal call where we will dive deeper into your health goals and provide personalized recommendations to help you achieve them. Three enroll in the program that is right for you. Explore our range of online programs designed to be accessible, holistic and tailored to your specific needs. With our programs rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and functional medicine, we help you find patterns that may have caused imbalances, how to correct them and restore your health. And don't forget to stay connected with us on social media. Follow Health University on Instagram at Dr Susan Fox for inspiration, tips and updates on the latest developments in wellness and holistic health.