The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Pregnant: Outdated Science, Infertility Burnout & Emotional Healing with Leslie Kenny Part Two
You’re tired. Tired of tracking every basal body temp, tired of the two-week-wait circus, tired of being told “your eggs are old” like you’re a carton of milk. Maybe you’ve done the rounds: IVF trauma, supplements that cost more than rent, and the endless “try this, try that” cycle. And yet… still no baby. You’re left with fertility burnout and the creeping fear that maybe you’re broken.
You’re not. You’re just stuck in outdated science and a nervous system running on survival mode.
Let’s talk about how to reset at the cellular level—because your body isn’t a lost cause, it’s just been screaming at you in a language you haven’t been taught to hear.
Junky Old Science Isn’t Your Destiny
If a doctor ever told you, “Your embryos failed, so it’s your fault,” welcome to the club. Leslie was told the same thing at 30. Her intuition screamed WTF, don’t believe that, and thank God she listened. Here’s the truth: much of what the fertility industry dishes out is based on stale, 1980s science.
Food-derived compounds, such as spermidine, are showing us that it is possible to reset ovarian health, improve egg quality, and lower cortisol levels. Translation: you’re not broken, your cells just need a tune-up. And spoiler alert—synthetic shortcuts don’t work. Your body knows the difference between real nourishment and a molecular knockoff.
"Your doctors may be using 80s science, but your body is wired for regeneration right now."
Why Your Nervous System Is Running the Show
You can eat the perfect diet, do yoga at sunrise, and meditate like a monk—but if your nervous system is fried from IVF trauma or unresolved grief, your body won’t feel safe enough to conceive. Period.
Trauma doesn’t disappear because you decided to “move on.” It lives in your cells like old VHS tapes looping the same fear stories on repeat. Until you stop outsourcing and actually hit eject, your ovaries will keep receiving static. Healing isn’t just kale and supplements—it’s emotional regulation and nervous system repair.
Choose Your Hard: Burnout or Breakthrough
Here’s the brutal truth: changing your lifestyle, digging into unresolved trauma, and trusting your intuition isn’t “easy.” But neither is another round of IVF that drains your bank account and your sanity. Both are hard. One keeps you stuck in chaos. The other puts you back in the driver’s seat.
When you choose radical responsibility, you stop waiting for doctors to “fix” you. You remember that your body was designed for balance. And that balance—not control-freak spirals—is what creates fertility.
"You’re not infertile. You’re inflamed, disconnected, and running on someone else’s script."
The Cellular Reset You’ve Been Craving
Imagine this: instead of obsessing over two pink lines, you start noticing your energy coming back. Your anxiety softens. Your cycle feels like it’s working with you instead of against you. That’s when you know the healing has landed—your nervous system is calm, your cells are renewing, and your body finally trusts it’s safe to bring in life.
This isn’t about chasing a magic pill or the next “miracle” protocol. It’s about learning to trust your body’s signals and create space for repair. That’s the shift that ends fertility burnout.
Final Takeaway
You are not broken. You are not out of time. You are simply being invited into a deeper level of healing than the fertility industry will ever sell you. When you reconnect with your intuition, regulate your nervous system, and nourish your cellular health, you don’t just improve fertility—you transform your whole life.
Ready to stop outsourcing your power and start listening to your body’s wisdom?
👉 LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE and dive deeper into how cellular health, nervous system healing, and radical self-trust can change everything.
Connect with Leslie Kenny:
- https://www.instagram.com/lesliesnewprime/
- https://oxfordhealthspan.com
- https://oxfordlongevityproject.org
- https://oxford-healthspan.myshopify.com/FindingFertility
- Your 15% off: FINDINGFERTILITY15
Let's Do This Together 💚
Monica
Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷♀️
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?
As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨
🌺 Book Your Fertility Breakthrough Session Today
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Full Transcript:
00:00
Hello beautiful and welcome to the Finding Fertility podcast.
00:10
I'm Monica, your mentor in uncovering the hidden layers of your fertility journey. Together, we'll discover the right path for you within the six essential steps to creating the family of your dreams. We'll ditch the overwhelm, tune into your intuition, and build a vibrant foundation for your fertility. Whether it's through gut health, subconscious healing, or energetic alignment, you can unlock your bodies.
00:34
natural power to get and stay pregnant. Your fertility journey is all about radical responsibility and deeply believing that your body is on your side. It's time to stay consistent, embrace trust, surrender, and create the transformation you deserve. Finding fertility does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat any fertility issues. What we do is empower you to take control of your health by uncovering the root causes holding you back. Let's do this together.
01:01
Happy Friday. Welcome back to another episode of Finding Fertility. I'm your host, Monica Cox, and I am truly honored you are here with me, becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Today, we have the second half of Leslie's conversation. I really hope this is inspiring you that fertility is all about cellular health and that you can radically change your cellular age.
01:30
with the right diet, lifestyle, energetics, you have so much control. So without further to do, let's get to today's episode. On the female fertility side, it helps with oogenesis. It helps with AMH, which I know is something that you've dealt with as well. um And it also helps with embryogenesis. And in animal studies,
01:59
uh Now I want to hasten to say that this has been studied in animals because to study something in pregnant females, this just doesn't happen, right? Good news is that this is a food, right? And if you stick to food-derived supplements, you'll be fine. Just please avoid the synthetics. And I'll tell you why in a second. So uh there was a study done in China with mice.
02:29
And they could see that these older uh middle-aged mice uh were actually having... They could produce more eggs, so they improved their ovarian reserve, but they also were having more embryos and more pups, so higher litter size, right? So that's the embryogenesis there. And what they noticed was they did an experiment and they used synthetic spermidine.
02:58
If you ever look for this, if anybody ever is thinking of supplementing, it will say, um, spermadine hydrochloride, spermadine, tetra hydrochloride, um, or if it doesn't say it's food derived, it's going to be synthetic. um, and, um, when they gave, when they gave a little bit of the spermadine, some, the synthetic seemed to help when they gave a little bit more.
03:27
it actually impaired fertility. This is what I worry about when I see products on the market that are synthetic, that have never been tested in humans. Spermating from food is, we've co-evolved with plants. Right. Right? So we make it in our bodies and we make it in our gut biome. And you want to give your body the
03:55
perfect three-dimensional molecule that it is used to receiving. Your receptors are looking for perfect three-dimensional compound, not a two-dimensional molecular mimic, which is what these synthetics are. So those are the ways that it helps with fertility. There have been studies on just hormone regulation for older women like me who've gone through menopause.
04:24
Um, where we can see one of the things that might be interesting to somebody who's trying to get pregnant is that, um, a Canadian study that used a highly concentrated wheat sherm extract supplement that had spermadine and spermine and putrescent in it. Um, they took five milligrams of this daily for 30 days and cortisol dropped in both the male and female cohort by 50%. That's a big drop.
04:54
And we know if we're stressed, we have a lot of cortisol that's not conducive to getting pregnant. In the men, testosterone went up just under 50 % on average. In the women, the estrogen and progesterone also increased. But in both genders, DHEA and pregnant alone increased. Now, when I was on my fertility journey, I
05:22
literally stumbled across another woman who learned that if she took DHEA when she was doing FSH, it increased the number of eggs and the quality. And I'm thinking, wow, this is a food substance and this is doing it. This is good, right? You know, there's like, what's the downside? I have to eat more plants, you know? So, um
05:50
So those are all the ways it helps with fertility. uh Again, this is something that really goes to the heart of the cell. There are many other parts of the body that it can assist simply by activating autophagy, cell renewal and recycling, and mitophagy, removing mitochondrial dysfunction and renewing the mitochondria and recycling the parts. So. Yeah. It's pretty amazing.
06:20
And to really go back to um the science, right, and how you said there's not going to be any kind of new science that is going to be able to be studied on pregnant women, whether that be stress, uh supplements. mean, folic acid comes up, right? Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate, different types of folate that are found naturally. um
06:45
And with maybe the way someone is genetically set up, we have to watch these synthetic forms, especially folate, because it's so thrown into our food. So it might be an OK supplement to have, but not be eating it in your fortified food consistently over and over again. Your body is like, it's a synthetic form. It doesn't really know what to do with it. So being very conscious of like, OK, is it from nature? Is it synthetic?
07:15
How much am I actually eating just like this? And looking back at the studies because you touched on em at the very beginning that, you know, we're told egg quality. I was told that at 30 years old, I was told you have low egg quality, your husband's sperm is fine, you made bad embryos, so therefore it's your fault. There's nothing you can do. Just keep trying IVF. And luckily, I say my intuition, my spirit guides were in that WTF appointment like WBS.
07:43
Yeah, do not listen and I was like, okay, show me where to go then because I don't have any knowledge. And em when you get into thick of this and you're studying and you're researching and then obviously your consistent action becomes your evidence. You look back and I'm just sitting there going like all these doctors are using junky old 80s science. Yeah, not willing to look at maybe some of the animal studies or this study because let's just face it.
08:11
There's no money, real money for these people to hoard when we're talking about getting back into homeostasis. em Yes, there's some supplements we can use if we don't have access to the foods or if we really can't, we don't want to eat it. I always say, if you cannot eat liver and the organ meats, please just go get a free joint supplement. It will change your life. um
08:37
So it's really important to use that intuition and that discernment when you're faced with doctors telling you there's nothing you can do, diet doesn't matter, your thyroid. mean, they still to this day, 2025 will tell women your thyroid does not, your thyroid issues does not affect your fertility. You're joking. I'm not joking. know, 50 % of my That feels like a bold faced lie. I'm sorry to say that.
09:05
I've seen so much evidence to the contrary. Exactly. Yeah. And they're just not willing to study. Right. I get it. They're trained a certain way. They have to keep on top of their certain way for their credentials. Maybe it's too out of the box. Maybe the science takes too long. Right. I forget his name off the top of my head, but there's this famous, he was Scottish and he founded, like this is back in the 18th century, right. um
09:35
being sterile during surgeries improved uh quality of like not dying, basically, right? And the English were like, no, no, no, that's not true. It took over a decade, maybe 20 years for the medical system to go, oh, actually, yeah, if we have a sterile environment, less reduce of infections and death. So I feel like we're in that time.
09:59
And I'm sitting there when women are like, well, they told me this and they told me that I'm like, look, the time is going to pass anyways. What are you going to do? You can either try with the diet and the lifestyle and improve all those things, which whether or not that gives you a baby, that's going to be the cherry on top because like, know, you're going to live, you're going to have a healthy life, a healthy 50s, 60s, 70s. And when you get into the mental and emotional side, you're even going to
10:27
actually love life and not look back at regret and like, oh, I wonder if I would have just done this. And so I'm like, well, choose, choose your heart because it's not easy to change your life for the better. You get into a new mindset of I have radical responsibility and empowerment here. I can change my whole situation if I'm willing to show up for myself in different ways, or you get stuck in the rut as we know of the medical system.
10:57
And that is hard to, and not empowering, and devastating, and financially. Yeah. And what's interesting is that we're also giving our power away to doctors, and we're making it their problem. And um type A personalities, which I think we both are, um I was very used to working on accumulating credentials. So I went to UC Berkeley. I went to Harvard Business School.
11:27
I wanted, was ranked eighth in the United States in Lincoln Douglas debate. was California state champion. I wanted credentials. I'd never done the work on my body. I'd only focused on my mind and getting working for companies. um I wanted to outsource the work on my body to somebody else. And of course there were companies like Weight Watchers at the time. You wanna lose weight? Well, go to Weight Watchers. They'll deal with it, right?
11:56
or you go to get, you know, liposuction done. There are all these ways that you can outsource your health and your looks. But in fact, it's up to us to do it and we'll get the best results. And once I reclaimed my power and was able to do the work, and the work is not just diet, sleep, movement, it can be trauma therapy. A lot of people.
12:25
have experiences which they honestly just can't even remember. They've pushed them so far down below because it's safer when they're in a box and they're buried, right? As a matter of fact, the doctor who diagnosed me with the hypothyroidism, with the Hashimoto's, he looked at my cortisol levels, which were terrible. I've just recently found them in a box and was like, wow, they were bad. And he said, your cortisol levels are the worst I have ever seen.
12:52
I think you've probably had this since you were a teenager. Did something terrible, did something big happen to you then? And I was like, no, no, I had the most normal childhood. And then I was like, wait a second, my dad killed himself. I had to run out of a burning house. My grandfather died within three, three and a half months of my dad dying. And it was like, I never thought of that. So many people have
13:22
these stories. uh you know, trauma is individual to each person. It doesn't have to be something like their house burning down with them in it. It can be whatever their bodies perceive to be unsafe. And it is valid for each person. Perception is what we're looking at, because that is what then chronically inflames the body and that chronic inflammation will inflame us.
13:49
and it's gonna inflammation everything. It's not just the wrinkles on your face, it's your ovaries too. So, I battled against the inflammation and it worked out great for me. And obviously just eating the right things to decrease inflammation and promote health helped with getting back to a cellular reset.
14:16
I think functional medicine is at this space where the tangible physical stuff isn't working anymore, right? A lot of people are showing up, they've done the work and I experienced this in motherhood. You know, I was perfect for a decade and you know, motherhood presents this whole other mirror, especially with the mental and emotional side and the patterns that you run.
14:41
the being perfect, the guilt, all those things, they don't magically disappear because you dealt with fertility struggles for eight years plus, or even just a few years. We think like, oh, well, we work so hard, we're just going to bypass all the stuff that's stuck in our nervous system that's just waiting to be exposed when motherhood comes along. And I found myself of like,
15:08
There's nothing physical I can do to get out of this anymore. I'm eating a perfect diet. I'm supplementing the right way. I'm doing yoga. I'm even doing like meditation and mindset. And that's when I was radically pushed forward more into the energetics and the emotional side of like, you have to look at these things. So when women come to me now and they're like, I'm doing everything right. And like you are, but let's, yeah, let's talk about, you know,
15:37
your dad dying. Let's talk about that car accident you were in. m know, your best friend betraying you. don't think consciously we can get, it's fine. We survived. We survived. your body's recorded something different. And what I try to say to people is like, your nervous system is the blueprint. It's the holographic. That's running the show. And so if you're not seeing the results you want, meaning not just the baby, but like, um you're not getting triggered.
16:06
by things anymore, or you're not in this buzz of I have to get everything done. And you're going back to that patience, the surrender, the time, that's when you know that you're actually healing. And that's why I talk about creating conscious mothers is because it's not just about the two pink lines. It's not just about giving birth because you are now this ripple effect.
16:30
within your community and for your epigenetics and for your generational trauma, all those things. Does it suck to maybe be that psycho breaker? A little bit. I'm not gonna lie. But at the same time, you look at it and you just go, I'm so glad that my kids don't have to go through nearly as much as I had to go through. that is the gift that you're giving them. And that's the hardship.
16:58
why you're going through these things. And it's not tangible, but I can, that's the only thing I can promise you is when you do this work, you can, you'll look back and you'll just be forever grateful for yourself that you showed up in a different way. Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent for me. And I'll confess, I am very, I think this is the second podcast I've done around fertility only. I'm mostly talking to people about
17:27
longevity and health span. That's what I'm known for, not for the fertility side. I'm known for my biological age. that is, you want to live for your unborn children, right? Especially as older moms. As older moms, exactly. Exactly. So you want to be able to be in the best shape possible. And it begins at preconception. And if that...
17:56
As I said before, if that means delaying the time at which you decide to have a baby or to conceive, well, the good news is you wait chronological time, but you can reclaim biological time. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if you feel this way, but I am forever grateful that I didn't have kids at 27, that I was given nearly a decade to really just sort the things I could out.
18:25
Trust me, I've given them some trauma. Like we're still navigating this earth together. I'm not perfect. But yeah, my kids are in elementary school now and I see a lot of the kids having issues emotionally, physically, mentally that maybe could have been reduced with more knowledge by the families of
18:53
of just even getting pregnant naturally, right? They probably didn't have struggles, but we're just going through and people just think that pregnancy is a sign of health. That, well, if you got pregnant, you're healthy. And we know that that's not true. Yeah, it's not always the case. I do think everyone, every mother is beautiful. Every child, every baby is a gift. you know, whenever that calling comes to you, that's to be honored. But um
19:24
For me personally, I would have liked to have had my children a little bit younger. Just, you know, 10, seven, 10 years, that would have been, I think that would have been nice. you know, I work on longevity all the time. And one of my colleagues, Sermier Gray at the Oxford Longevity Project said, anybody who achieves age 50 today should fully expect to live to 90. That is where we have gotten.
19:54
And I don't know if you saw this, but um about a month ago, the International Monetary Fund released statistics that 70-year-olds today have the same cognition as 53-year-olds in like 2002. And grip strength and lung capacity of these 70-year-olds is equivalent to 56-year-olds 20 years ago. So in other words, as a population, older people
20:23
are healthier. Really? In that their grip strength, their grip strength, their lung capacity is probably because we've stopped smoking, right? um And remember the drinking. anybody's ever watched Mad Men or watched their own parents or grandparents five o'clock is cocktail hour, right? That was how it was in my grandparents' house anyway. um We don't do it like that anymore. And so the...
20:52
70-year-olds are healthier, but for 50-year-olds who definitely don't do that, right? A lot of younger people are not drinking like they used to. We're all living longer. That means don't think that your life at age 70 or 80 is going to look like that of the 70 and 80-year-olds in your life right now.
21:18
Yeah. I mean, if I think about my grandmother, I'm 60. My grandmother at this age had a bouffant Margaret Thatcher hairdo, had lots of hairspray. She, you know, sometimes used Dippity Doo. I don't know if anybody remembers Dippity Doo, that pink, know, radioactive looking stuff. And she doesn't look anything like me. And that's what's wonderful if we take the opportunity to do some self care. We have...
21:46
Even if we're older mothers, we have a long, healthy life ahead of us that we can enjoy. We can contribute to the lives of our children. Even though we are chronologically older, there is the opportunity to be biologically younger. Yeah. And would you say it's the opposite to, I mean, my father just died at 68. I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you. But he didn't take care of his cellular health, right? Like it just.
22:14
um snowballed on all levels of it. And um are we seeing a generation that maybe hasn't woken up to, hey, you need to start taking care of your health, you know, in your 40s and your 50s. You know, is there this split? Even though we might be living longer, you know, I do question, you know, like I have an uncle that lived to 68, but he was obese and diabetic.
22:43
Yes. And so medicine really gave him 10 years. would I say he was living the last 10 years? No. Probably not. Chronic ill health is, unfortunately, that can happen. Now, those IMF figures were across 41 countries. I'm not talking about the United States or Great Britain. I'm talking about
23:05
41 countries that include countries like Japan, which has the healthiest, the healthiest, uh they have the longest health span. They live the longest and they are the healthiest. And ironically, they spend less than pretty much any other OECD country. That's the irony because the health is built into their daily life. They walk everywhere.
23:32
You know, they do Ikebana. They're practicing Zen as they arrange flowers. Marie Kondo, you know, it means that they can declutter their home and be Zen. Or the foods they're eating like natto. You know, they're getting lots of opportunities for spermatine into their lives. So, um So, yes, those statistics are from 41 countries. And they're amazing. And it's just, I think, a testament to what uh
24:01
can be your future. And if you really rise up to the occasion that your fertility struggle is just your opportunity to support your body in a way you never thought possible, you are, know, and the studies behind the, you know, it takes three generations to turn off genes. Well, let's start talking about the three generations to turn them back on. You can give your child that first generation that boosts uh
24:28
that we need to not have to overthink everything. Because I think we are the generation that has to overthink, figure out all this stuff. And then once it's just normal, like my kids know that when they go to a party, they can eat whatever they want, but they don't overdo it. Because my nine-year-old has that awareness of like, okay,
24:49
10 marshmallows that I ate at last birthday party made me feel like, you know, not very good. Yeah, I felt sick. three, right? Yeah, just be aware of that where I didn't have that knowledge until I was about 32. So you know, all of this is just think about, you know, our mothers, our grandmothers, what the sages within our own families, the wise women in our own lineage would say.
25:16
everything in moderation, everything in balance. I don't know where we lost this. Did we lose it a few generations ago? But at least in my family, I knew from my grandparents who had studied medicine at the University of Kyoto in Japan, I knew that they always said, bring the body back to balance and it knows how to do the rest.
25:41
And that is my overarching philosophy. I think that, you know, mother nature, you can't fool mother nature by taking these shortcuts and listen to the wise women in your own family who will have at one point said everything in moderation. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. We'll just let our listeners know where they can connect with you and follow you and your amazing supplement company that you do have. Sure. Yeah. So you can.
26:10
The work I do on longevity is at the OxfordLongevityProject.org. So OxfordLongevityProject.org. And that's a nonprofit. And then I have my own Instagram page where I'm pretty active. m That is Leslie's New Prime, like the new prime of life. So it's Leslie, L-E-S-L-I-E, then an S, new prime. So lesliesnewprime.com.
26:37
And then for more information on spermidine, you can go to OxfordHealthSpan.com. Perfect. And all those will be down in the show notes for easy access. Thank you so much for coming on. I knew when we got introduced that we would have such a lovely conversation. So thanks for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge with us. Thank you. Likewise, I learned a lot and it's been beautiful. Thank you once again for tuning in and becoming the conscious mama you were born to be.
27:06
Remember I wasn't some magical unicorn who stumbled into fertility success. I stayed consistent. I put in the work and I made it happen. And guess what? You can too. And I have something for my loyal podcast listeners, but here's the key. This is only for women who are feeling burnt out, frustrated and stuck in the cycle of endless research. And you're at a point where you are screaming, I have tried everything. Why isn't this working?
27:36
This only works for women who are ready to take a radical responsibility for their journey and start listening to their body's innate wisdom. Because deep down, you know you can heal and achieve your ultimate goal. If that's not you yet, that's okay. Not everyone is ready yet to show up with ease, deeply connect to their energy, unlock subconscious patterns, and listen to their body's ability to come into full
28:05
coherence. But for those who are ready, I'm offering something I only do with my paying clients and this is a fertility breakthrough session. This is the first thing I do even before I start really deeply working with someone in a coaching package. It's a deep dive session where we look at exactly where you are right now, what's keeping you stuck, and the easy shifts that can change everything.
28:33
But fair warning, these sessions are very limited and go fast. So if you're interested in checking out my superpower for uncovering exactly what's been overlooked, jump into one of these free calls. They're deep, they're intuitive, and they're game changing. The only way you can access this is if you actually personally message me.
28:56
You can do it on your favorite platform, IG, TikTok, at my personal email, monica at findingfertility.co, not .com because they wanted $3,000 for the M with just one word. And that word is dreams. Obviously D-R-E-A-M-S. And I'll make sure you get that link right away. Remember this transformation happens when you stay committed to yourself.
29:25
Trust your body, follow your intuition, make it possible. The links that you need are down below. And if you are still here and you absolutely love this podcast, please take some time and leave me a review and help other women like you find this podcast to get the support they need. Help a sister out. Leave a review today.
