In this episode of The Healers Café, Manon Bolliger, FCAH, RBHT (facilitator and retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice) speaks with Dr. Marina Stratsak-Suri, an experienced OB/GYN and functional medicine advocate, discusses her holistic approach to women's health and fertility. She highlights the importance of lifestyle factors, such as diet, exercise, and stress management, in improving fertility and overall health. Dr. Suri notes a significant increase in conditions like obesity, metabolic disease, PCOS, and endometriosis, linking them to environmental chemicals.
For the transcript and full story go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/dr-marina
Highlights from today's episode include:
Dr. Marina: "Lifestyle—food, sleep, stress, toxins—directly shapes fertility, but medicine rarely addresses it."
Dr. Marina: "The pill can hide serious period problems; it treats symptoms, not the root cause."
Manon: The 24-year-old who agreed to a hysterectomy without realizing it meant no future pregnancy shows a critical failure of informed consent.
ABOUT DR MARINA STRASZAK-SURIDr. Marina is an experienced OB/GYN and dedicated educator with over thirty-five years of experience in women's health and fertility. She combines her medical expertise with a passion for evidence-based, holistic approaches, naturally empowering individuals to optimize their reproductive health. Dr. Marina enjoys teaching and mentoring the next generation of medical professionals while staying at the forefront of reproductive science. Inspired by her journey as a mother, she shares cutting-edge insights and practical strategies to help readers navigate the complexities of conception and pregnancy. Through her compassionate and educational approach, she aims to demystify fertility and provide the tools to build healthier, thriving families.
Core purpose / passion : My mission is to empower people to understand their bodies better and to take control of their health journey.
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn |
ABOUT MANON BOLLIGER, RBHT, FCAH:
As a retired Naturopath 1992-2021, I saw an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.
My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books: 'What Patients Don't Say if Doctors Don't Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship' and 'A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress'. and What if Your Body is Smarter than You Think? I am the Founder & CEO of The Bowen College Inc. which teaches BowenFirst™ Therapy and holds transformational workshops to achieve these goals.
So, when I share with you that LISTENing to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience".
Mission: A Healer in Every Household!
For more great information to go to her weekly blog: http://bowencollege.com/blog.
For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips
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* De-Registered, revoked & retired naturopathic physician after 30 years of practice in healthcare. Now resourceful & resolved to share with you all the tools to take care of your health & vitality!
00:00:00
Manon Bolliger: Welcome to the Healers Cafe, the number one
00:00:03
show for medical practitioners and holistic healers to have
00:00:08
heart-to-heart conversations about their day-to-day lives,
00:00:12
while sharing their expertise for improving your health and
00:00:17
wellness.
00:00:17
So, welcome to the Healers Cafe, and today I have Dr. Marina
00:00:27
Stratsak-Suri. I hope I didn't completely butcher that. Pretty
00:00:32
close, because Strutsak Suri, but I'm sure you could say it
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better. And well, you've had you're an experienced OB/GYN
00:00:44
educator, and 35 years of experience in women's health and
00:00:49
fertility, and then you've also taken a mixed, not mixed
00:00:55
approach, a a holistic, complementary approach of
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looking at the the paradigm, conventional paradigm, with also
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more holistic paradigms, but an evidence based holistic
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approaches. It was functional medicine, so that so you're
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looking at the the blood work and seeing, but a bigger blood
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work and more blood work than typically we assess in
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conventional medicine to see if the thyroid forget for example
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is off. I don't know how it is in the states everywhere, but
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we're very limited in what we can order as medical doctors.
00:01:41
You have to explain why you would want a bigger profile in
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order to get a bigger picture of the person. So often, you know,
00:01:50
you have to really ask for more, and you have to justify it
00:01:55
because they only pay for certain amounts of things, and
00:01:57
the rest you pay out of pocket. But they don't like that because
00:02:02
they think it should all be included. So anyway, it's very
00:02:06
it's very mixed and very difficult for pregnant women
00:02:10
over here. But so why don't we start with just welcome, and
00:02:15
then why don't you share a bit your experience and you know
00:02:19
what an educator! What your role is, and what you've been
00:02:23
educating on?
00:02:25
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Sure, sure. Well, I'm a conventionally
00:02:28
trained OB/GYN in Ottawa, Canada. I used to practice
00:02:33
everything, including delivering babies and doing surgery. But at
00:02:37
this point in my career, I just do office gynecology. I'm a
00:02:42
generalist, which means I do anything in women's health,
00:02:45
whether it be fertility or contraception or sexual
00:02:49
dysfunction or abnormal Pap smears. You know, basically
00:02:52
whatever comes my way, I will deal with. And I got interested
00:02:59
in functional medicine, which is more of a roots cause approach
00:03:02
medicine about 20 years ago, when Mark Hyman's first book
00:03:06
came out called I believe Ultra Wellness, and when I read that
00:03:11
book, it really opened my eyes to another another way of
00:03:16
looking at medicine, very much as to you know not just making a
00:03:21
diagnosis and treating a condition, but asking the
00:03:23
question why you know why is this happening? What are the
00:03:27
potential causes? And functional medicine really looks at
00:03:30
everything from in lifestyle, from you know what you eat, how
00:03:35
much you sleep, how much stress you're under, but also your
00:03:38
genetics, and it's it's a very holistic approach. It doesn't
00:03:45
treat you know the the pelvis is one part of the body that's not
00:03:49
attached to anything else, but everything, and that really
00:03:52
opened my eyes in treating you know in treating my patients,
00:03:57
but also in in my own health and you know health problems I was
00:04:01
dealing with. I was very tempted to maybe do just functional
00:04:08
medicine, but at the time that was a scary proposition because,
00:04:11
first of all, it wasn't well known here, and second of all,
00:04:15
people in Canada are very used to having everything paid for,
00:04:19
and in functional medicine, you do need to order a lot of tests,
00:04:24
extra testing. Often, that testing is only available in the
00:04:27
United States, and it's it's quite expensive in terms of time
00:04:33
because you have to spend a lot of time finding out about a
00:04:36
patient's history. So I don't call myself a functional
00:04:39
medicine doctor. I made the decision to stay within the
00:04:42
system in which I work, but I just brought aspects of it into
00:04:47
how I deal with patients, how I explain things to get them to
00:04:51
read, to get more knowledge about things, and to understand
00:04:54
their conditions better. But I still practice pretty
00:04:58
conventional medicine.
00:05:00
Manon Bolliger: I mean, you know, it's really it. It's the
00:05:04
woman who prepares her body, anyways. It's like it must be a
00:05:08
field where there's a little bit more connection to your body
00:05:12
than most other fields, right? Like you're suddenly needing to
00:05:18
care for another human being if you're, you know, pregnant, so
00:05:22
suddenly you start thinking, oh, is it this I should be eating,
00:05:25
or that, or really an educated time, you know, where women tend
00:05:31
to look at everything or all possibilities, or if they have
00:05:34
infertility issues, at you know, what are the causes? Like, where
00:05:39
did this begin? Is it, you know,
00:05:41
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: exactly? Is it
00:05:42
Manon Bolliger: me or is it my partner? Is it the food we're
00:05:45
eating or the plastics we're drinking? Exactly.
00:05:49
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: But those questions aren't usually
00:05:51
the ones that are asked. It's usually, you know, are my tubes
00:05:53
open? Is my husband's sperm count okay? And I think you need
00:05:57
to go well beyond that because you know the food we eat is
00:06:00
really important, and the plastics we consume are very
00:06:04
important.
00:06:06
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, well, I think I can't remember what this
00:06:08
is quite a while ago, at least 20 years ago. I went to a
00:06:12
conference, and they were saying male testosterone was going way
00:06:17
down, and the sperm count was like of a 70-year-old in a you
00:06:22
know 35-year-old, and I'm like, oh my god, that was then. I
00:06:26
can't imagine.
00:06:27
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Yeah, in two generations, sperm counts
00:06:30
have gone down by more than 50% and they're continuing to
00:06:34
decrease at a very rapid rate.
00:06:37
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
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Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: it's very scary.
00:06:40
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, no, that's definitely an issue for creation
00:06:43
and for human beings, right? I think that's going to have to
00:06:47
come from somewhere.
00:06:49
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Exactly.
00:06:51
Manon Bolliger: So, what is the most common issue that that you
00:06:56
see? You know, that that couples or women come in, you know, for
00:07:02
in your experience,
00:07:04
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: are you talking about infertility
00:07:06
patients or in general in my practice?
00:07:09
Manon Bolliger: In in general in your practice, yeah.
00:07:12
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: So I, you know, because we are seeing
00:07:14
a lot more obesity and metabolic disease and insulin resistance
00:07:19
and diabetes, we're also seeing more polycystic ovarian
00:07:22
syndrome, which is a related condition where women are not
00:07:27
ovulating regularly and they're having more trouble getting
00:07:29
pregnant. And the other thing that I see a lot more of is
00:07:33
endometriosis, which is a condition causing painful
00:07:36
periods and fertility problems. And both those things I used to
00:07:40
see in my practice a lot, but now it seems like I'm seeing so
00:07:44
much more of both of them, and I'm convinced that the chemicals
00:07:50
in the environment play a role in both of those things, and
00:07:53
those are both fertility issues, right? Yeah, and lifestyle plays
00:08:02
a role in both of those things in treating those things. Only I
00:08:06
don't think in conventional medicine they do look at
00:08:08
lifestyle at all. They look for drugs or surgery, you know,
00:08:12
which are pretty limited when it comes to fertility, because most
00:08:17
of the drugs they use for both of those conditions prevent you
00:08:20
from getting pregnant at the time you're using them, so it's
00:08:23
not very helpful for the young woman who wants to get pregnant.
00:08:27
Manon Bolliger: No, no, no, definitely not. Sorry, it
00:08:31
reminds me of a terrible story, but I just have to share it. It
00:08:35
was actually when I was in practice, which I'm currently
00:08:39
not in practice, but so this was about 35 years ago, and this was
00:08:46
my first year of practice, and I practiced about 30 years. I had
00:08:50
a woman come in, absolutely eager to get pregnant, to learn
00:08:56
all the right things to eat, what to do, what not to do,
00:09:01
everything, and I was working in Nova Scotia at the time, and in
00:09:06
her, you know, her the medical file, you know, where she fills
00:09:11
out her conditions and this and that, and you know, I have at
00:09:17
the time it was about four pages, you know, to sort of know
00:09:20
the history. She had put hysterectomy, and I, you know, I
00:09:28
had to go through the forum. And she's like 24, and I it just
00:09:33
broke my heart. She did not know what that was. What she said is
00:09:39
that it would help her period, so that it would stop being so
00:09:43
painful, and and you know that she would eventually not have to
00:09:48
have one. But that's the lack of education, you know the the
00:09:53
informed consent that went missing. That was huge. That
00:09:58
that yeah that got. Me very upset first year of practice.
00:10:03
It's very shocking, you know. So, yeah, I think what do you
00:10:07
see that is not being, you know, told or that you feel women need
00:10:15
to know whether they're told or not. It depends what you read,
00:10:18
and what's kind of things that if you could tell women like
00:10:22
two, three things, please read about this or know about.
00:10:26
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: I think I'm seeing a lot more women who
00:10:28
are delaying pregnancy for many reasons, whether it's their work
00:10:33
or not finding a partner or finances, and they seem to have
00:10:37
this idea that freezing their eggs is just going to solve
00:10:40
everything. First of all, I want them to know that the quality of
00:10:45
the eggs they freeze is very important. So, just freezing any
00:10:49
old egg is not going to do the trick. You want to freeze a high
00:10:53
quality egg, and the way you make a high quality egg is by
00:10:56
being healthy, by you know having the best diet possible,
00:11:02
sleeping as much as you need to, exercising, dealing with stress,
00:11:06
avoiding chemicals, and then you get a high quality egg. And you
00:11:11
know, so if you're planning to freeze your eggs, take the time
00:11:14
to improve your health before you do that. That's one
00:11:18
important thing.
00:11:20
The other important thing that I I say throughout my book is
00:11:24
don't take your fertility for granted, especially you know
00:11:26
when you're young, you have painful periods, you go to see
00:11:30
the doctor and they put you on the birth control pill so you
00:11:32
can just forget about your periods for the next 10 years.
00:11:36
Don't think that that's going to solve your problem in the end
00:11:39
because what the doctors often forget to say is you may have a
00:11:43
problem getting pregnant in the future, and that should be dealt
00:11:46
with sooner than later, rather than just forget about it. You
00:11:50
know. Yeah.
00:11:52
Manon Bolliger: No. Yeah. It seems like they would have to be
00:11:55
related. Eventually, you have to get to the cause of this, right?
00:11:59
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Exactly. Exactly. But but people sort of
00:12:02
tend to think of the birth control pill as a cure, and it's
00:12:05
not a cure. It's just a management. It's it's it treats
00:12:09
the symptoms, but it doesn't solve the problem.
00:12:12
Manon Bolliger: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And often they do
00:12:15
take it not for that, but to help the pain.
00:12:19
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Yes.
00:12:20
Manon Bolliger: Right. And it
00:12:21
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: and it works, so they're happy. It
00:12:23
works,
00:12:23
Manon Bolliger: but but
00:12:24
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: it's not. It's still not curing them.
00:12:27
Manon Bolliger: No, no, no. And and I again, this is not my
00:12:31
field of expertise, but I I've understood that there's also an
00:12:35
increase cancer rate with the use of some of these birth
00:12:41
controls, or is that true? Like
00:12:45
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: there have been many studies on cancer
00:12:48
and the birth control pill, and particularly of concern is
00:12:52
breast cancer. And there have been massive studies, and some
00:12:57
have shown absolutely no increase, and others have shown
00:13:00
a slight increase in risk. So, basically, that the counseling
00:13:04
is there may be a slight increase in risk in the long
00:13:07
run. You know, we we don't know more past that. But I think
00:13:14
there there are a lot of other factors that are sort of missed
00:13:17
when you're put on synthetic hormones. It can give you all
00:13:21
sorts of side effects and issues and problems that are sort of
00:13:27
swept under the carpet, and a lot of women don't tolerate them
00:13:31
very well.
00:13:32
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00:14:42
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: So, there,
00:14:44
Manon Bolliger: such as as wood,
00:14:47
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: just oh, a lot of women will suffer
00:14:49
from mood changes. Sometimes a lot of depression, from
00:14:53
headaches, migraines, not feeling well, weight gain. You
00:15:00
know, with the lower and lower dose pills, it's not as bad as
00:15:03
it used to be because the birth control pill is literally 10
00:15:07
times less the dose than it used to be when it first came out in
00:15:11
around 1960. So it it has improved from many points of
00:15:15
view. It's not as as bad as it used to be, but there seem to be
00:15:21
a lot more side effects these days, or at least maybe women
00:15:24
are complaining more. But I'm wondering whether there isn't
00:15:28
more interaction with chemicals in the environment, and that's
00:15:30
why I hear more complaints. And I suspect that that's part of
00:15:36
Manon Bolliger: it. Well, it's almost like there's a toxic load
00:15:39
that we're all carrying. Yes, you you add one more thing. It
00:15:44
could be the thing, but it could be the ensemble of you know
00:15:48
terrible stuff. Like absolutely unbelievable how much toxicity
00:15:55
we're being exposed to,
00:15:58
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: and we're all genetically different
00:16:00
in terms of how we manage that toxicity. So the people who have
00:16:05
poorer detoxification in their liver, which is a genetic thing,
00:16:11
will be the first ones to have the symptoms. You know that the
00:16:14
canaries in the coal mine.
00:16:16
Manon Bolliger: So those are
00:16:16
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: the people who often will tell you,
00:16:19
"I react to every medication I take. I guess side effects with
00:16:23
the lowest doses, I can't tolerate that. Or the people
00:16:27
with the chemical sensitivities, they used to be thought as of
00:16:31
you know as people who complain a lot and don't really have a
00:16:34
problem or making up their issues. But these are the people
00:16:37
who don't metabolize drugs well and and don't metabolize toxins
00:16:42
well because it's the same metabolic pathways.
00:16:44
Manon Bolliger: Exactly. Yeah, and we're seeing
00:16:47
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: more and more of those people.
00:16:49
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, I'm definitely one of those. Yeah, I
00:16:53
used to think, oh, come on, I'm I'm a hypochondriac, or you
00:16:57
know, but it's it's not not it's not that. It's just I can tell
00:17:02
ahead the the reactions almost and and um now I I'm much much
00:17:08
better than I was but I have really done a lot to work with
00:17:12
my immune system you know and and with homeopathy which has
00:17:17
made me much more tolerant you know so yeah but it was very
00:17:23
hard when everything seems to be an irritant. You know, I'd have
00:17:26
always like scratchy eyes and sniffing nose, and you know all
00:17:31
of that for nothing. You know, so
00:17:33
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: yeah,
00:17:34
Manon Bolliger: yeah, it's interesting. And I did have the
00:17:36
pleasure of taking once an aspirin and reacted to it. It's
00:17:41
like this cannot be true, but it is, you know. So anyway, I guess
00:17:46
that's why I went into likely I went into naturopathic care
00:17:52
because I I had to figure out something natural
00:17:56
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: that would
00:17:56
Manon Bolliger: that would work, you know. Though you can react
00:17:59
to trees and all kinds of things naturally, right? So, but it's
00:18:05
really about looking after the immune system, which is not
00:18:10
something that in typical medical care they do. That's you
00:18:15
know some anyway. What about? I was thinking. I'm hearing so
00:18:21
many pelvic, you know, pelvic hair is needed. Like I don't
00:18:27
know if you know on Instagram, and you know I follow. I don't
00:18:30
write much in there, but it's like seems to be so many women
00:18:34
now are having these. You know, they need to go to see a
00:18:38
specialist for this. They're having pain, and you know, in
00:18:43
young ages, like in their 30s, it seems like so much more than
00:18:48
before. Are you is is that just a one-off experience that I'm
00:18:53
looking at, or is there something going on there? Are
00:18:56
you
00:18:56
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: speaking particularly about pelvic pain,
00:18:58
menstrual pain, or
00:19:00
Manon Bolliger: it's actually with pregnancy, a lot of like
00:19:05
you know low back. I mean, there's always been low back
00:19:07
pain, and there's you know adjustments to some woman, but
00:19:11
it seems like this whole idea of you know the need to work with
00:19:15
the pelvic floor has really increased in consciousness.
00:19:20
Anyway,
00:19:22
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: I think you know we we've recognized
00:19:25
over the years that a lot of unexplained pelvic pain can be
00:19:29
due to muscular, you know, asymmetry, and and that pelvic
00:19:36
floor physiotherapy can be extremely helpful for these
00:19:39
pelvic floor problems. And I think it's the the recognition
00:19:42
is there that it can be helpful in in disorders that we didn't
00:19:46
recognize before.
00:19:47
Manon Bolliger: Right.
00:19:48
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: So
00:19:50
Manon Bolliger: that makes sense. It's a good thing. I
00:19:53
guess the more you bring consciousness to what's not
00:19:57
feeling right, the more therapy. Or ways come to your, you know,
00:20:03
in your line of vision. I guess you start to see them because
00:20:09
you're looking for help in that area. Yeah. Now, what else do I
00:20:16
want to ask about your practice? Why don't you maybe share one of
00:20:21
the more exciting aspects of what you do, and and in which
00:20:26
ways you you feel you make that difference for people.
00:20:31
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Well, I I guess what I'll talk about is
00:20:33
is the writing of my book because that's been pretty life
00:20:36
changing for me.
00:20:38
Manon Bolliger: Yes,
00:20:39
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: and I'll I'll talk about how how it
00:20:40
all started. So about three years ago, my daughter graduated
00:20:44
from medical school, and she had her birthday shortly thereafter.
00:20:49
She was older than her classmates. She had done two
00:20:52
degrees before, and she had turned 31. And she asked for her
00:20:56
birthday present if I would pay for her to freeze her eggs, and
00:21:00
I was taken aback. Now I get that request in my office from
00:21:04
patients, but I didn't expect it from my daughter because I sort
00:21:08
of felt that she was still young enough that she didn't really
00:21:11
have to think about it. But she's she's a person who thinks
00:21:13
ahead smartly. So, and my first reaction was yes, of course. You
00:21:19
know, I want grandchildren. If I have to pay for freezing your
00:21:22
eggs, I'll do that. But then I thought about it, and she was
00:21:25
starting a residency at the fifth biggest trauma center in
00:21:27
the U.S. in emergency medicine, and I thought, oh my God, the
00:21:31
next few years are going to be hell for her. And you don't want
00:21:35
to freeze your eggs when you're stressed and tired. That was my
00:21:38
first thought. And you know, intuitively, I knew stress-tired
00:21:42
eggs are not going to be healthy eggs or good eggs, and and
00:21:45
that's a lot to do with my functional medicine type of
00:21:47
thinking. And I've also been very interested in longevity
00:21:51
medicine for a long time, for my own health and for my patients'
00:21:54
health as well. And and that's all about lifestyle too, as
00:21:57
well. So what I started thinking was you know I have all these
00:22:02
patients who are delaying pregnancy and they want to be
00:22:05
able to do something in the meantime and many of them are
00:22:08
interested in freezing their eggs and I know that lifestyle
00:22:11
is important but I know also that my colleagues don't talk
00:22:14
about it in conventional medicine so I started
00:22:17
researching with my daughter in mind you know what? What can I
00:22:22
show has proof? What lifestyle changes have proof behind them
00:22:26
that they improve fertility? So I started looking, you know, at
00:22:30
diet, at the literature on diet, at the literature on exercise,
00:22:33
on sleep, on stress reduction, and the big big one is on on
00:22:38
reducing chemicals in your environment, and started
00:22:41
researching papers to show that improving these things would
00:22:45
improve your fertility for a woman or for a man, for
00:22:50
Manon Bolliger: both.
00:22:50
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: And there actually is a lot of
00:22:52
literature to support this. Now, maybe not those huge mega
00:22:55
studies that are double-blind, you know, sort of randomized
00:23:00
control trials. No, there are there's small smaller trials
00:23:03
because when it comes to non pharmaceutical, non surgical
00:23:07
medicine, there's less money to support that kind of research.
00:23:12
But there is research in that, and and there actually I was
00:23:15
surprised to learn how much there was, and this really made
00:23:20
me happy because I thought this is what people need to know.
00:23:24
Certainly, when they're preparing for pregnancy on the
00:23:27
long term, if they're wanting to freeze their eggs or if they
00:23:31
have conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, because
00:23:34
lifestyle management really you can turn very irregular periods
00:23:38
into regular periods by improving the diet, improving
00:23:43
exercise, making sure their vitamin D and vitamin B 12 are
00:23:47
optimal. You know, giving them omega threes if their HDL is
00:23:51
low. If you do all these things, your periods start normalizing.
00:23:57
Weight is lost more easily. It just everything comes together,
00:24:04
and having seen patients through this, and I've had more
00:24:07
pregnancies in my practice in the last year than I've had for
00:24:11
years before that because I've started really focusing on those
00:24:14
patients.
00:24:15
Manon Bolliger: Yeah.
00:24:16
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: So I ended up doing that research,
00:24:18
and then I decided to start a course for some of my patients
00:24:21
who I knew were attempting pregnancy, and I did like a
00:24:24
weekly web, a monthly webinar series. And at the end of four
00:24:29
months, I finished the first round of webinars, and I
00:24:31
thought, "Wow, this this really needs to be a book. So that was
00:24:35
my next project: was to turn it into a book.
00:24:38
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:24:40
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: and basically, it's it's been three
00:24:42
years of my life, but I finally launched my book on june 20, and
00:24:46
it's now on Amazon.
00:24:48
Manon Bolliger: Oh, what is it called? It is
00:24:49
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: called. It's right behind me. It's
00:24:51
called Optimize Your Fertility Naturally, and it's basically
00:24:56
about all those things that I talked to you about, as well as.
00:25:00
Few different things like other traditional medicines, like
00:25:03
Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine,
00:25:08
and what they do about fertility, and newer things like
00:25:12
platelet-rich plasma in rejuvenating ovaries, newer
00:25:18
things in immunology and pregnancy. Because I learned a
00:25:21
lot, you know, teaching this book, and I thought people have
00:25:25
to know about this because it's generally not talked about in in
00:25:30
fertility medicine. In our our way of dealing with things, you
00:25:34
know, like the average gynecologist, if somebody's
00:25:37
complaining about infertility, will check if your tubes are
00:25:40
open if you're ovulating, if the sperm count's okay, and then if
00:25:44
those are all okay, you sort of send them for IVF. They're
00:25:47
usually told you have unexplained infertility, you
00:25:49
need IVF, and there's nothing happening in between. Like you
00:25:53
know, what's your general health like? How do you eat? Are you
00:25:56
under stress? That's completely ignored.
00:25:59
Yeah.
00:25:59
So I really thought there was room for this kind of education
00:26:03
somewhere between, you know, regular care and IVF care.
00:26:09
Manon Bolliger: And and what have you found to be the the
00:26:15
biggest? I don't know what's why my brain's going in French
00:26:18
today. It's like I'm translating. It really, I'm not
00:26:23
sure what's going on, but we'll go with it. But what is the the
00:26:29
things that that you see most often, let's say in your last
00:26:35
year, that women are not getting right, or that surprisingly,
00:26:41
like they're saying, "Oh, I didn't realize that, you know. I
00:26:46
think that
00:26:46
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: they don't realize how many things
00:26:48
can affect fertility. It's been dealt, you know, dealt with like
00:26:53
a plumbing problem. You know, if the valves are open, it should
00:26:56
work, right?
00:26:56
Manon Bolliger: Right. Whereas
00:26:57
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: everything that you do in your life affects
00:27:00
your health and your fertility. It affects both. So you know,
00:27:05
stress being a major one, of course, we're all under stress.
00:27:09
Our lives are very stressful. What's happening in the world is
00:27:12
very stressful. That's part of life, and if it's not well
00:27:16
managed, it affects your health in terrible ways, and it'll
00:27:20
affect your fertility, and and that's not really well
00:27:27
recognized generally. But you know you have to really look at
00:27:30
everything. If you're eating junk food four times a week,
00:27:34
that's not great for your fertility. And and people think
00:27:37
they can sort of get away with it and don't think it's really
00:27:41
important,
00:27:42
Manon Bolliger: right? Yeah, and I think too there's like you
00:27:45
know drugs that are almost advertised as safe, you know, oh
00:27:52
you can just take Tylenol, you can take this, you can take, you
00:27:56
know, or spray the house with Febreze, or
00:28:01
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: and that's the other thing. So many
00:28:02
more young people are on medications these days than they
00:28:05
used to be in the past. So antidepressants being a huge
00:28:09
one, and it's they're sort of told, well, there it's pretty
00:28:13
safe, you know. But I I think that that those drugs do a lot
00:28:19
more. I mean, we we're seeing a lot more autism, a lot more
00:28:23
anxiety, a lot more ADHD. It's connected with the way we live,
00:28:30
you know. And and it's it may be hard to find the actual root
00:28:34
cause because it's probably multifactorial for a lot of
00:28:36
those things. But the drugs that we take are, you know important
00:28:42
contributors?
00:28:43
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, our our time is
00:28:48
up, and I just want how can people get hold of you? Well,
00:28:51
the book on Amazon, but do you still see people and and so I
00:28:57
still have an
00:28:58
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: office practice in Ottawa. Okay, but
00:29:02
you know I'm getting I'm past retirement age, so it's
00:29:06
something I'm sort of trying to develop a career more as a
00:29:11
writer and an author, as as a speaker and an author now. So I
00:29:15
will be looking at retiring in the. I haven't set a date, you
00:29:19
know. I'm looking at that slowly, but in the meantime, I
00:29:22
do want to write more and speak more. I do have a website. It's
00:29:26
Dr. Marina OBGYN. That's drmarina obgyn.com, where I have
00:29:31
information about my book. I write a weekly blog on
00:29:34
fertility, so you can sign up for the blog. And I'm now in the
00:29:40
process of talking more about my book now that it's finally out,
00:29:44
so I'm trying to appear on podcasts and and you know on on
00:29:49
radio and so forth. I've got interviews set up, so I will be
00:29:54
in people's faces a bit more if I'm successful, and people will
00:29:58
hopefully hear about. I'm doing and and can definitely get in
00:30:02
touch with me through the website. I'm also on Instagram
00:30:06
dr.marina. Obgyn, so you can follow me on Instagram.
00:30:12
Manon Bolliger: All right. Well, thank you very much for giving
00:30:15
us some of your time and your expertise.
00:30:18
Dr Marina Straszak-Suri: Well, thank you so much. It's been
00:30:19
lots of fun.
00:30:21
Manon Bolliger: Thank you for joining us at the Healers Cafe.
00:30:23
If you haven't already done so, please like, comment, and
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00:30:33
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00:30:38
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