ones that are asked. It’s usually, you know, are my tubes open? Is my husband’s sperm count okay? And I think you need to go well beyond that because you know the food we eat is really important, and the plastics we consume are very important.

Manon Bolliger  06:06

Yeah, well, I think I can’t remember what this is quite a while ago, at least 20 years ago. I went to a conference, and they were saying male testosterone was going way down, and the sperm count was like of a 70-year-old in a you know 35-year-old, and I’m like, oh my god, that was then. I can’t imagine.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  06:27

Yeah, in two generations, sperm counts have gone down by more than 50% and they’re continuing to decrease at a very rapid rate.

Manon Bolliger  06:37

Yeah,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  06:38

it’s very scary.

Manon Bolliger  06:40

Yeah, no, that’s definitely an issue for creation and for human beings, right? I think that’s going to have to come from somewhere.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  06:49

Exactly.

Manon Bolliger  06:50

So, what is the most common issue that that you see? You know, that that couples or women come in, you know, for in your experience,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  07:04

are you talking about infertility patients or in general in my practice?

Manon Bolliger  07:09

In in general in your practice, yeah.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  07:11

So I, you know, because we are seeing a lot more obesity and metabolic disease and insulin resistance and diabetes, we’re also seeing more polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a related condition where women are not ovulating regularly and they’re having more trouble getting pregnant. And the other thing that I see a lot more of is endometriosis, which is a condition causing painful periods and fertility problems. And both those things I used to see in my practice a lot, but now it seems like I’m seeing so much more of both of them, and I’m convinced that the chemicals in the environment play a role in both of those things, and those are both fertility issues, right? Yeah, and lifestyle plays a role in both of those things in treating those things. Only I don’t think in conventional medicine they do look at lifestyle at all. They look for drugs or surgery, you know, which are pretty limited when it comes to fertility, because most of the drugs they use for both of those conditions prevent you from getting pregnant at the time you’re using them, so it’s not very helpful for the young woman who wants to get pregnant.

Manon Bolliger  08:27

No, no, no, definitely not. Sorry, it reminds me of a terrible story, but I just have to share it. It was actually when I was in practice, which I’m currently not in practice, but so this was about 35 years ago, and this was my first year of practice, and I practiced about 30 years. I had a woman come in, absolutely eager to get pregnant, to learn all the right things to eat, what to do, what not to do, everything, and I was working in Nova Scotia at the time, and in her, you know, her the medical file, you know, where she fills out her conditions and this and that, and you know, I have at the time it was about four pages, you know, to sort of know the history. She had put hysterectomy, and I, you know, I had to go through the forum. And she’s like 24, and I it just broke my heart. She did not know what that was. What she said is that it would help her period, so that it would stop being so painful, and and you know that she would eventually not have to have one. But that’s the lack of education, you know the the informed consent that went missing. That was huge. That that yeah that got. Me very upset first year of practice. It’s very shocking, you know. So, yeah, I think what do you see that is not being, you know, told or that you feel women need to know whether they’re told or not. It depends what you read, and what’s kind of things that if you could tell women like two, three things, please read about this or know about.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  10:26

I think I’m seeing a lot more women who are delaying pregnancy for many reasons, whether it’s their work or not finding a partner or finances, and they seem to have this idea that freezing their eggs is just going to solve everything. First of all, I want them to know that the quality of the eggs they freeze is very important. So, just freezing any old egg is not going to do the trick. You want to freeze a high quality egg, and the way you make a high quality egg is by being healthy, by you know having the best diet possible, sleeping as much as you need to, exercising, dealing with stress, avoiding chemicals, and then you get a high quality egg. And you know, so if you’re planning to freeze your eggs, take the time to improve your health before you do that. That’s one important thing.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  11:20

The other important thing that I I say throughout my book is don’t take your fertility for granted, especially you know when you’re young, you have painful periods, you go to see the doctor and they put you on the birth control pill so you can just forget about your periods for the next 10 years. Don’t think that that’s going to solve your problem in the end because what the doctors often forget to say is you may have a problem getting pregnant in the future, and that should be dealt with sooner than later, rather than just forget about it. You know. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  11:52

No. Yeah. It seems like they would have to be related. Eventually, you have to get to the cause of this, right?

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  11:59

Exactly. Exactly. But but people sort of tend to think of the birth control pill as a cure, and it’s not a cure. It’s just a management. It’s it’s it treats the symptoms, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

Manon Bolliger  12:12

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And often they do take it not for that, but to help the pain.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  12:19

Yes.

Manon Bolliger  12:20

Right. And it

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  12:21

and it works, so they’re happy. It works,

Manon Bolliger  12:23

but but

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  12:24

it’s not. It’s still not curing them.

Manon Bolliger  12:26

No, no, no. And and I again, this is not my field of expertise, but I I’ve understood that there’s also an increase cancer rate with the use of some of these birth controls, or is that true? Like

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  12:45

there have been many studies on cancer and the birth control pill, and particularly of concern is breast cancer. And there have been massive studies, and some have shown absolutely no increase, and others have shown a slight increase in risk. So, basically, that the counseling is there may be a slight increase in risk in the long run. You know, we we don’t know more past that. But I think there there are a lot of other factors that are sort of missed when you’re put on synthetic hormones. It can give you all sorts of side effects and issues and problems that are sort of swept under the carpet, and a lot of women don’t tolerate them very well.

Commercial Break  13:32

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Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  14:42

So, there,

Manon Bolliger  14:44

such as as wood,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  14:47

just oh, a lot of women will suffer from mood changes. Sometimes a lot of depression, from headaches, migraines, not feeling well, weight gain. You know, with the lower and lower dose pills, it’s not as bad as it used to be because the birth control pill is literally 10 times less the dose than it used to be when it first came out in around 1960. So it it has improved from many points of view. It’s not as as bad as it used to be, but there seem to be a lot more side effects these days, or at least maybe women are complaining more. But I’m wondering whether there isn’t more interaction with chemicals in the environment, and that’s why I hear more complaints. And I suspect that that’s part of

Manon Bolliger  15:35

1. Well, it’s almost like there’s a toxic load that we’re all carrying. Yes, you you add one more thing. It could be the thing, but it could be the ensemble of you know terrible stuff. Like absolutely unbelievable how much toxicity we’re being exposed to,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  15:58

and we’re all genetically different in terms of how we manage that toxicity. So the people who have poorer detoxification in their liver, which is a genetic thing, will be the first ones to have the symptoms. You know that the canaries in the coal mine.

Manon Bolliger  16:16

So those are

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  16:16

the people who often will tell you, “I react to every medication I take. I guess side effects with the lowest doses, I can’t tolerate that. Or the people with the chemical sensitivities, they used to be thought as of you know as people who complain a lot and don’t really have a problem or making up their issues. But these are the people who don’t metabolize drugs well and and don’t metabolize toxins well because it’s the same metabolic pathways.

Manon Bolliger  16:44

Exactly. Yeah, and we’re seeing

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  16:47

more and more of those people.

Manon Bolliger  16:48

Yeah, I’m definitely one of those. Yeah, I used to think, oh, come on, I’m I’m a hypochondriac, or you know, but it’s it’s not not it’s not that. It’s just I can tell ahead the the reactions almost and and um now I I’m much much better than I was but I have really done a lot to work with my immune system you know and and with homeopathy which has made me much more tolerant you know so yeah but it was very hard when everything seems to be an irritant. You know, I’d have always like scratchy eyes and sniffing nose, and you know all of that for nothing. You know, so

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  17:33

yeah,

Manon Bolliger  17:34

yeah, it’s interesting. And I did have the pleasure of taking once an aspirin and reacted to it. It’s like this cannot be true, but it is, you know. So anyway, I guess that’s why I went into likely I went into naturopathic care because I I had to figure out something natural

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  17:55

that would

Manon Bolliger  17:56

that would work, you know. Though you can react to trees and all kinds of things naturally, right? So, but it’s really about looking after the immune system, which is not something that in typical medical care they do. That’s you know some anyway. What about? I was thinking. I’m hearing so many pelvic, you know, pelvic hair is needed. Like I don’t know if you know on Instagram, and you know I follow. I don’t write much in there, but it’s like seems to be so many women now are having these. You know, they need to go to see a specialist for this. They’re having pain, and you know, in young ages, like in their 30s, it seems like so much more than before. Are you is is that just a one-off experience that I’m looking at, or is there something going on there? Are you

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  18:56

speaking particularly about pelvic pain, menstrual pain, or

Manon Bolliger  18:59

it’s actually with pregnancy, a lot of like you know low back. I mean, there’s always been low back pain, and there’s you know adjustments to some woman, but it seems like this whole idea of you know the need to work with the pelvic floor has really increased in consciousness. Anyway,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  19:22

I think you know we we’ve recognized over the years that a lot of unexplained pelvic pain can be due to muscular, you know, asymmetry, and and that pelvic floor physiotherapy can be extremely helpful for these pelvic floor problems. And I think it’s the the recognition is there that it can be helpful in in disorders that we didn’t recognize before.

Manon Bolliger  19:47

Right.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  19:48

So

Manon Bolliger  19:49

that makes sense. It’s a good thing. I guess the more you bring consciousness to what’s not feeling right, the more therapy. Or ways come to your, you know, in your line of vision. I guess you start to see them because you’re looking for help in that area. Yeah. Now, what else do I want to ask about your practice? Why don’t you maybe share one of the more exciting aspects of what you do, and and in which ways you you feel you make that difference for people.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  20:31

Well, I I guess what I’ll talk about is is the writing of my book because that’s been pretty life changing for me.

Manon Bolliger  20:38

Yes,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  20:38

and I’ll I’ll talk about how how it all started. So about three years ago, my daughter graduated from medical school, and she had her birthday shortly thereafter. She was older than her classmates. She had done two degrees before, and she had turned 31. And she asked for her birthday present if I would pay for her to freeze her eggs, and I was taken aback. Now I get that request in my office from patients, but I didn’t expect it from my daughter because I sort of felt that she was still young enough that she didn’t really have to think about it. But she’s she’s a person who thinks ahead smartly. So, and my first reaction was yes, of course. You know, I want grandchildren. If I have to pay for freezing your eggs, I’ll do that. But then I thought about it, and she was starting a residency at the fifth biggest trauma center in the U.S. in emergency medicine, and I thought, oh my God, the next few years are going to be hell for her. And you don’t want to freeze your eggs when you’re stressed and tired. That was my first thought. And you know, intuitively, I knew stress-tired eggs are not going to be healthy eggs or good eggs, and and that’s a lot to do with my functional medicine type of thinking. And I’ve also been very interested in longevity medicine for a long time, for my own health and for my patients’ health as well. And and that’s all about lifestyle too, as well. So what I started thinking was you know I have all these patients who are delaying pregnancy and they want to be able to do something in the meantime and many of them are interested in freezing their eggs and I know that lifestyle is important but I know also that my colleagues don’t talk about it in conventional medicine so I started researching with my daughter in mind you know what? What can I show has proof? What lifestyle changes have proof behind them that they improve fertility? So I started looking, you know, at diet, at the literature on diet, at the literature on exercise, on sleep, on stress reduction, and the big big one is on on reducing chemicals in your environment, and started researching papers to show that improving these things would improve your fertility for a woman or for a man, for

Manon Bolliger  22:49

both.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  22:50

And there actually is a lot of literature to support this. Now, maybe not those huge mega studies that are double-blind, you know, sort of randomized control trials. No, there are there’s small smaller trials because when it comes to non pharmaceutical, non surgical medicine, there’s less money to support that kind of research. But there is research in that, and and there actually I was surprised to learn how much there was, and this really made me happy because I thought this is what people need to know. Certainly, when they’re preparing for pregnancy on the long term, if they’re wanting to freeze their eggs or if they have conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, because lifestyle management really you can turn very irregular periods into regular periods by improving the diet, improving exercise, making sure their vitamin D and vitamin B 12 are optimal. You know, giving them omega threes if their HDL is low. If you do all these things, your periods start normalizing. Weight is lost more easily. It just everything comes together, and having seen patients through this, and I’ve had more pregnancies in my practice in the last year than I’ve had for years before that because I’ve started really focusing on those patients.

Manon Bolliger  24:15

Yeah.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  24:16

So I ended up doing that research, and then I decided to start a course for some of my patients who I knew were attempting pregnancy, and I did like a weekly web, a monthly webinar series. And at the end of four months, I finished the first round of webinars, and I thought, “Wow, this this really needs to be a book. So that was my next project: was to turn it into a book.

Manon Bolliger  24:38

Yeah,

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  24:39

and basically, it’s it’s been three years of my life, but I finally launched my book on june 20, and it’s now on Amazon.

Manon Bolliger  24:47

Oh, what is it called? It is

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  24:49

called. It’s right behind me. It’s called Optimize Your Fertility Naturally, and it’s basically about all those things that I talked to you about, as well as. Few different things like other traditional medicines, like Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, and what they do about fertility, and newer things like platelet-rich plasma in rejuvenating ovaries, newer things in immunology and pregnancy. Because I learned a lot, you know, teaching this book, and I thought people have to know about this because it’s generally not talked about in in fertility medicine. In our our way of dealing with things, you know, like the average gynecologist, if somebody’s complaining about infertility, will check if your tubes are open if you’re ovulating, if the sperm count’s okay, and then if those are all okay, you sort of send them for IVF. They’re usually told you have unexplained infertility, you need IVF, and there’s nothing happening in between. Like you know, what’s your general health like? How do you eat? Are you under stress? That’s completely ignored.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  25:59

Yeah.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  25:59

So I really thought there was room for this kind of education somewhere between, you know, regular care and IVF care.

Manon Bolliger  26:07

And and what have you found to be the the biggest? I don’t know what’s why my brain’s going in French today. It’s like I’m translating. It really, I’m not sure what’s going on, but we’ll go with it. But what is the the things that that you see most often, let’s say in your last year, that women are not getting right, or that surprisingly, like they’re saying, “Oh, I didn’t realize that, you know. I think that

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  26:46

they don’t realize how many things can affect fertility. It’s been dealt, you know, dealt with like a plumbing problem. You know, if the valves are open, it should work, right?

Manon Bolliger  26:56

Right. Whereas

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  26:57

everything that you do in your life affects your health and your fertility. It affects both. So you know, stress being a major one, of course, we’re all under stress. Our lives are very stressful. What’s happening in the world is very stressful. That’s part of life, and if it’s not well managed, it affects your health in terrible ways, and it’ll affect your fertility, and and that’s not really well recognized generally. But you know you have to really look at everything. If you’re eating junk food four times a week, that’s not great for your fertility. And and people think they can sort of get away with it and don’t think it’s really important,

Manon Bolliger  27:42

right? Yeah, and I think too there’s like you know drugs that are almost advertised as safe, you know, oh you can just take Tylenol, you can take this, you can take, you know, or spray the house with Febreze, or

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  27:59

and that’s the other thing. So many more young people are on medications these days than they used to be in the past. So antidepressants being a huge one, and it’s they’re sort of told, well, there it’s pretty safe, you know. But I I think that that those drugs do a lot more. I mean, we we’re seeing a lot more autism, a lot more anxiety, a lot more ADHD. It’s connected with the way we live, you know. And and it’s it may be hard to find the actual root cause because it’s probably multifactorial for a lot of those things. But the drugs that we take are, you know important contributors?

Manon Bolliger  28:43

Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, our our time is up, and I just want how can people get hold of you? Well, the book on Amazon, but do you still see people and and so I still have an

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  28:58

office practice in Ottawa. Okay, but you know I’m getting I’m past retirement age, so it’s something I’m sort of trying to develop a career more as a writer and an author, as as a speaker and an author now. So I will be looking at retiring in the. I haven’t set a date, you know. I’m looking at that slowly, but in the meantime, I do want to write more and speak more. I do have a website. It’s Dr. Marina OBGYN. That’s drmarina obgyn.com, where I have information about my book. I write a weekly blog on fertility, so you can sign up for the blog. And I’m now in the process of talking more about my book now that it’s finally out, so I’m trying to appear on podcasts and and you know on on radio and so forth. I’ve got interviews set up, so I will be in people’s faces a bit more if I’m successful, and people will hopefully hear about. I’m doing and and can definitely get in touch with me through the website. I’m also on Instagram dr.marina. Obgyn, so you can follow me on Instagram.

Manon Bolliger  30:12

All right. Well, thank you very much for giving us some of your time and your expertise.

Dr Marina Straszak-Suri  30:18

Well, thank you so much. It’s been lots of fun.

Ending

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