She Helped 10,000 Women Conceive Naturally — What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You - Kirsten Karchmer

Please see your family doctor or medical practictioner before seeking medical advice from a Acupuncturist, Natural Doctor etc... 

Diva Tonight Podcast is sharing the opinions of special Guest Kirsten Karchmer with hopes of educating you on different options, that are available.

Your cycle is giving you data every month and most of us were never taught how to read it. We sit down with Kirsten Karchmer, a reproductive acupuncturist with 20 plus years of clinical experience and a women’s health tech founder, to talk about what fertility symptoms can reveal about energy, inflammation, and overall health.

We start with Kirsten’s personal story of competitive gymnastics, extreme overtraining, and what it taught her about the gap between how “healthy” someone looks and what their organs and hormones are actually doing. From there, we dig into precision medicine for women’s health: why there’s an optimal range for period health, how personalized diet and lifestyle changes can shift outcomes fast, and why social media sound bites often keep women stuck.

Then we get practical. Carlene shares her experience with anemia, fibroids, and heavy bleeding, and Kirsten breaks down why “just take iron” is not the same as asking what’s driving the problem. We talk PMS, clotting, nutrition you can actually stick with, and the bigger picture connection between stress physiology, heart rate variability, PCOS, endometriosis, and inflammation. We also call out detox myths, doom scrolling, and the impossible workload many women carry, plus Kirsten’s vision for virtual care that supports women from fertility through perimenopause and menopause.

If you want smarter women’s health education, real talk about hormones, and actionable fertility and cycle health insights, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you’re trying next.

https://kirstenkarchmer.com/

Transcript

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Welcome And Meet Kirsten

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to Diva Tonight with Carleen Humphrey, a relationship podcast with a focus on life, love, and friendship. Welcome to Diva Tonight.

Carlene 0:12

Hi, I'm Carleen, and this is Diva Tonight. I have with me on Zoom Kirsten Karchmer, and she is in Austin, Texas. She is the TikTok queen of fertility, you know, when it comes to fertility information and helping other women find ways to improve their chances of fertility. Your background is in acupuncture. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I was, yeah, I was one of the first reproductive acupuncturists in North America.

Carlene 0:45

Wow. So thank you for taking the time to be on the show. I really appreciate it. So I did a little homework and I know that you were training. I mean, this is your story that you've mentioned online that you were a gymnast and you were training, and then I guess your your health was like totally shot when I guess you were probably not managing your your physical and your mental health. I guess all everything, your diet, you know what I mean? And then you were struggling with MS at a very young age. And so what was that like?

Overtraining And Early MS Wake Up

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Well, I think it's really important for everybody who's listening because I think that we're getting a lot of in information and messaging on social media, me included, that may not be useful for women. And part of that is like how you should look, you know, and how hard you should work out. And as a competitive gymnast, you know, I trained every single day when I was growing up. I trained so hard until I threw up most days. And what's interesting about that is on the outside, if I was on Instagram, like in a bikini, people would have been like, that girl is so jacked. She is so strong, she is so healthy. But the reality is I was exhausted. I was sleeping all the time, I didn't have a period anymore, I was really anxious all the time. Because just because our bodies look strong on the outside, we have to pay attention to how the organs are being impacted. And so while I was using all these resources to make a really strong outer body, my organs were really exhausted. And so much so that, you know, I my MS popped up at that place where I was my most exhausted. I'm not talking exhausted from working hard for a week or two. I'm talking of years of overtraining, you know. Did that cause MS? No, probably just my doctor would have said, like, you had MS since you were born, and you got to like some certain very depleted state in which you gave it the opportunity to pop up. And and then what happened was that also is the opportunity to go back into remission with the right intervention.

Carlene 2:42

There's a I think, you know, this is not where we're going, but I think the one thing, the misconception with MS is that like can you can you recover from it? Because I think we've seen people, I remember in high school watching this video on MS. Like we were talking about like, you know, um diseases and such, and you see this person who's got MS, and they're I think we were talking about euthanasia at that point, where the the fight to end the pain, like you know, like I'm not functioning anymore, my body is, you know. I think that's that's where it was ah, but you you clearly have proven that if you catch it quick enough that you can recover.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Here's what I'll say. I'm of one of one. I've worked with a lot of people with MS, and certainly we can help them to feel a lot more comfortable. You know, if you look at the uh Dr. Walls, she's a neurologist who had MS. She was a neurologist, right? Her own in a subspecial her own specialty. Her MS was so severe that she was like in a full wheelchair. And she, you know, started researching like what are the other ways that I'm gonna get on top of this, and really went pretty much into remission also. But I always say, like, each person, whether your disease is MS or PCOS or endometriosis, each person's unique presentation is going to be different. And and what we do our best work is if we not try to treat MS, but we treat what is this person's presentation of that illness. So Dr. Walls' presentation was different from mine. My current presentation, I'm sure, is different than her presentation, which means there's no cookie cutter interventions for any of it, which is why I'm pushing so hard across all of women's health for more personalization, like personalization on crack. Because what I mean.

Carlene 4:27

Yeah, like like what I mean, acupuncture can work for me. Um, I've never tried it, but it is listed as one of the things for my condition. I've talked a little bit on the show, like about it, but I think the my mission is to educate as many women as possible because I think when you turn 40, you have those uh-huh moments, or you have the realization that now I'm here and I've arrived and I'm comfortable in my own skin. And now I have all these other things that I have to take care of, you know? And so with you in mind and all the the the career changes

Books Language And Finding Your Voice

Carlene 5:05

you've had, I want to ask you about your your first educational endeavor. Like I thought it was so interesting to hear the conversation you had with your dad about being going back to school for English, and he was saying to you, Why would you study English literature? Just go to the library, like, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Well, you know, I like I said at the beginning, I'm a very curious person. So I got to college and my parents didn't go to college. My my dad, my mom didn't work. She was a stay-at-home mom. We had five kids. And my dad, when they first got married, was a door-to-door lock salesman. They had enough money at the end of the week. There was one quarter, 25 cents at the end of the week. That was all that was left after feeding everybody, paying all the bills, and nothing splurge, right? They would take a quarter down to the local bar. My grandmother would come and babysit the kids, and they had enough to share a beer. That was date night for them. So my dad was very scrappy, you know, and very practical. And my other siblings went to college too. But when I told my dad that I wanted to study English literature, because I really just like to read, he was like, We need a marketable skill here. We're actually making a pretty significant investment in you, and we need a ROI. So we want to make sure that we're not going to be taking care of you forever, right? Doing some arty farty bullshit, like, you know, reading books and things like that. And, you know, I was like, Dad, look, what you don't understand is that people need to be able to communicate. And the best communicators on the planet are the ones who will actually have the access to the most power because they can articulate what they want and need in powerful ways. He didn't buy it for a second because what he also I had a second degree in French, which really upset him because he's like, Great, you've got a degree in English and French, two things you already know how to do. What a waste of money. And unfortunately, he died. I wrote I've written two books, one best-selling book so far that one hasn't launched yet. It's kind of sad that he didn't get to see that, like, of course, you never make a ton of money off of a book. That's kind of a fantasy. If you write a book, it's for you. But it did make some money. And I wanted it would have been nice to be able to be like, see, Daddy, it wasn't all for nothing. Like, maybe it paid for my tuition, maybe.

Carlene 7:09

Wherever he is in the universe, I don't know what you believe in, but I think it's kind of like a testament to every English major out there. This is for the English majors out there. I am an English major. I studied English. I loved reading too. I spent many hours in the library. The library was my happy place. I think at one point I wanted to be a librarian. So I can relate to when you said that in the interview. I was like, oh my gosh. I might I don't think my dad said that, but my parents were like, you should be a lawyer or you should be this. Like, you know, it was all the things that you know, parents tell you to do. And I'm like, but I don't want to do any of those things that you can be a lawyer.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah. And I would have to, you know, do a lot of things that I don't want to do. I mean, then I became a linguist, which was a nice extension because what I realized is I love language, you know, that that I like words in any language. And and when you start layering more languages on top of that, that's super interesting in how how language impacts culture and culture and language and literature. So I have a question for you. Then what's your favorite book? Ooh, so for me, um, that's a good question.

Carlene 8:16

Thank you. Um, I do like Anne of Green Gables. That was my favorite one. I was younger. I related to her because she was like always interrupting class and talking in so much. And actually, my friend's mom gave me that for my birthday, like an updated version of it. So I was just so happy because I always talk about Anne of Green Gables and she likes it too. But what is your favorite book? Pride and Prejudice, baby.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Ooh, Jane. I just like things. Yeah. I just really associated with Lizzie, you know, the character, because you know, she's sort of different. I always felt that I was like not like the other girls and things like that, and but not but fearless and formidable and cute. And I just was like, you know, for her, uh Jane Austen gave me a way, like that character Lizzie was a role model for me of I mean, she's not that much older than me, but you know, like of just sticking to your beliefs and values, but at the same time not being impenetrable, you know, like yes, you have some things that you think are true and that you believe, but also having to be open to see the big picture.

Carlene 9:23

Oh, I like that. Oh my gosh. I think I have to put that on my list of books to read. Jane Os. I read Emma in university, but I didn't read Pride and Prejudice. I don't know. Is it a it's a long read? I feel like it is.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

It's here's what I always tell people watch the Kira Knightley version first, then read the book. Because it's long. It is long, but then you will get all the details. You'll you'll be like, oh, okay, there's Mr. Darcy, and you'll like the conversations will be so much more rich, and you're like, oh, as a as somebody who likes literature, you know.

Carlene 9:52

Do you find that literature takes away, like I mean, watching the movie takes away from reading the book? Because my friend has said that to me. Like he finds after you watch a movie, then you have the visuals from the movie. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 10:05

I don't, I mean, I have read that book like 25 times, so and I often don't it's sort of like you know how it's sort of like my comfort blanket. Like when I get really stressed, I'm like, I'm gonna read some, you know, Pride and Prejudice. It depends. Like, Pride and Prejudice is dense. It's like read it's not as dense as sort of, you know, the Art of War or Dove Ktoeveski or, you know, like Moby Dick, but it's dense enough that you can get a little bit mired in the very long Victorian prose. And so what can happen then is like if you don't really kind of know what to look for and to get excited about, sometimes it's easier to

Precision Medicine For Fertility

SPEAKER_01 10:40

be like, well, this is taking too long to get to wherever we're going.

Carlene 10:43

Wow. From literature to, you know, writing a book. So, I mean, you have a few books, but your career has taken you many places, right? And so your company, Brazen, focuses on precision medicine for women's health. Can you tell me more about this approach and how it's a game changer?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yes. So my current company is conceivable. I do own a company called Brazen, but conceive Brazen actually owns conceivable. But um, okay. So precision medicine, like we were talking about before, like often you'll hear people say on social media, I always reference that because I feel like too many people get that's how they get educated about their bodies, is on social media. And I just want to debunk some of that. But they'll say, you know, everybody's period is different and it's perfect just how it is, and that's just not true. Like to me, that's sort of saying, like, because our doctors are saying, like, oh, whatever your period, if you have a period, that's probably good enough. But the research just doesn't support that at all, that there is an optimal state. And it's not, I don't like perfectionism for women and people with periods. I think it's dangerous for us. So it's not about being perfect, it's about knowing in which, like, what is the state in which your body is functioning as well as it possibly could. Like you're just at its most optimal functioning. And what we found is that women only had to get about 60% of that up to that optimal state before they had exponentially higher fertility. I correlate fertility with optimal health, right? If you're not optimally healthy, you will not be optimally fertile. If you are optimally fertile, you are probably optimally healthy as well. So, yeah, so what we need to do is for each of those individuals who are trying to get pregnancies back to the precision medicine, is like, what are all of the underlying issues that person has that's impacting their ability to get and stay pregnant? It could be they only have one day of bleeding, or they're exhausted, or they have a lot of gut issues, or they don't sleep well, or they have a long period or a short period or a lot of pain. There's about 50 of these factors, and none of them are causes of infertility. All of them have been shown to make it harder to get pregnant. And so if you think about them as each one of those is weights, and they're either stacking the deck in your favor, making you more and more optimally fertile, or stacking the negative side, making you less and less fertile. So our job is to identify them and slowly but surely through diet lifestyle, personalized diet lifestyle and behavioral, move all those weights that are working in the less fertile into the optimal fertile. And when you start doing it, it's like a virtuous cycle. Like you start making, you figure out why there isn't enough energy, you fix that, they make more energy, now they have more resources to make blood. Oh, they have

Anemia Fibroids And Heavy Periods

SPEAKER_01 13:20

more resources to make blood, they have more resources to make hormones, they have more energy, now they can regulate temperatures better, and so on and so on.

Carlene 13:25

So we're gonna start with the educational component here because I feel like understanding is more important than anything else. So I'm gonna be the patient, okay? I'm gonna be subject A so that we can help me help others. And so I am anemic. I also have fibroids. I realized two years ago how bad it was when you said like the first bleeding. My periods lasted eight days, sometimes nine. So right now I take something to help with the bleeding.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

And I really take to help with the bleeding.

Carlene 14:02

Um transam transamic acid. Okay. Is it helping? It does help. It's lessening my period. So it used if without it, oh my goodness. I um I still, I mean, I still change my patch regularly regularly, but it's helping it a bit more than had I not been taking it.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

So the first thing that I would have a lot, I mean, we need an hour to do a full consultation, but the first thing that I hear is like, okay, so the reason that you're anemic, right? Your doctor wants to just give you iron. That's what I call non even though that seems personalized, you have anemia, take iron. That is not personalized. In order to be personalized, then the doctor needs to say, but why are you anemic? So is it what kind of like how would you rank the quality of your diet? Uh a 10 would be like, you know, you go to the farmer's market every day, right? And a one would be, you know, you only eat McDonald's every day. So where is yours in that spectrum?

Carlene 14:57

On a scale of one to 10 in terms of my diet, um, maybe a six. Some days are better than others when I'm good to go, like you know, just eating. Yeah, I'm feeling better. Like today, last night, I'm like, I've put more red meat in my diet, and I try to make lamb lentil peas and you know, anything with iron-rich foods in it to boost my anemia. Cause once I have my period, I'm so drained.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Like it's well, the first thing is there is a formula. We used to sell it at brazen, but we're we're it's not available right now, but you can get on something similar on Amazon. How much PMS do you have? I don't know what that means. Um any symptoms, mood change before you before your period, mood changes, mood change, back pain.

Carlene 15:43

I have I feel like those symptoms are like perimenopause, which I already told my doctor, like hot and cold, sweats, irritable, moody, fatigue, like yeah, I know when my period's coming.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Okay. So right now what's happening is because you have anemia, the the liver needs a lot of blood to function well. When you have anemia, you see more and more PMS. But when you have PMS, everything gets constricted, right? Including because when you feel PMS, you're like bloating, breast tenderness, everything's squeezed, and even your emotions get that weight, but the vessels get that way too. So that that then gives you higher predisposition for fibroids, clotting, cramping. And to get rid of those clots, that's why you have the heavy bleeding. So your body is trying to dump all of the blood to get rid of as many clots as possible. You'll see as soon as the clots are gone, then you go down to like almost no bleeding, probably. And then, so if we get rid of the clots, don't be surprised. What will happen is that you'll get rid of the cramping. I mean, you'll get rid of the the clotting, and if there's any cramping, that should go away with that too. But at the same time, you'll have almost no blood, and then we have to start building the blood back up. So that's where I would start. And then and then at the same time, really, you know, increasing all month long your iron-rich foods, but in a way that you can digest it. Like I think that pate is the easiest way. So if you do you cook at all? Do you like to cook?

Carlene 17:08

Yeah, I do. Not a huge cooking fan, but I cook because uh, you know, it's better than going out because it's expensive now. You know what I mean? Like everything. Yeah. So I mean, I get ground beef and beef and lentils, and I know red pepper, uh like a whole bunch of peppers and stuff. That's what I do as well. If I'm looking for something super easy, then I just make rice with lentil peas or kidney beans because I know both are good. And beet juice. I hate beet juice. It's really hard to do that.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

No, no, no, don't do that. It's got too much sugar in it. Just eat beets.

Carlene 17:41

Eating beets like you, like I keep with pickled beets. Have you ever had them pickled? I will try pickled beets.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

I will try raw pickled, like you kind of grate them, like it almost makes like slaw. You don't need a ton, but but then also like go to like Whole Foods and get some good pate, just a little bit. It's expensive the first.

Carlene 17:58

Oh, yeah, that sounds expensive.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

And get some bread, some yummy bread, and then put it on there. It's liver, it's basically just liver, you know. But it's easy to make.

Carlene 18:08

Yeah, my dad said the same thing, and I'm just like it tastes really good though.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Like, and you can taste it. Whole foods say I never had pate before. My acupuncturist sent me, like, can I try a few different ones, see which one is best? And they'll let you try it. And it just tastes, it tastes really good. It's not I hate liver, but I like this, but you can make it yourself, and you can make a huge thing. My mom would make this when I would have babies, and she would put like she'd follow the recipe and then she put parsley in it and hard-boiled eggs, but she'd puree it, so you wouldn't even know there was like parsley or hard-boiled eggs in there. Both are super iron-rich. So you got the liver, you got the eggs, you got the parsley, plus all the other stuff. And when you make it, you'll make like a brick of it. It'll make so much more. Like you'll get at the grocery store like this much, like the slice of a bread piece, you know. But you can make a big ass thing and then every morning put a big schmear on there. But you don't want to be doing that if you're not using something to get rid of the clotting and cramping.

Carlene 19:00

Oh, so it's not gonna help. Because I'm always gonna be playing ketchup like I've been doing for the last year.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Well, it's just it's just bad. If you're if your blood, if you're getting fibroids, it tells us now this is not try to scare you, right? Because in Chinese medicine, we're looking for things that are outside of perfect as opposed to already a disease state. But if you think about it, like women who have significant menstrual pain, fibroids, cramping, they have significantly higher risk for heart disease. Why? Because we never managed, if the blood is clotty and congested, your menstrual blood, people think, well, that's just isolated to the uterus. No, that's systemic, right? Our men's the fact that we have a period, we get to peek at our blood every single month. So it's not a scare attack, it just means it's just hopefully something to incentivize you. Like I have thyroid, I don't I take thyroid medicine. And if you take too much thyroid medicine, it can make you have osteoporosis, like bone loss. I'm already small framed, even though I have a giant head, and so have a high risk for osteoporosis. So just like you have higher risk for heart disease, because that you want to make sure to do things that are good for your heart all the time. I always want to make sure to do things to take care of my bones.

Carlene 20:06

Because heart disease is on my dad's side, but he said it's more common in the men than in the women. That's what he said to me.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

You know, just do everything you can. Like you don't have to figure out where or what. You know, and then and then what you can assume is if you can get rid of the clotting and the pain, and then we build the blood up, that in my opinion, that means you have undermined that risk. What's happening in your period is is the risk. To me, it's like, hey, we can see that the blood is congested, that it's you've got you know, you're getting making fibroids, it's not flowing well, it's hemorrhagic because trying to discharge either the stagnation or the clots. And so what we just want to do is do everything we can over the next like three or four months to fix that so that then we don't have again, just because whatever you do that fixes the blood in your uterus, that also is systemic. It's not possible to just like roadblock off the blood in your uterus and be like, okay, no water what we do, it's just gonna your blood circulating. All the blood is circulating all the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Diva tonight,

Clots PMS And Whole Body Health

SPEAKER_00 21:05

glamour for your ears.

Carlene 21:07

I've seen the guy Nicolas just many times. I've even talked to someone at the Naturopath store in the mall, like you know, and she told me three months, and so you're saying it again. So I guess if I practice this for three months, just sticking to it, which is easier said than done.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

So that's a community belief system. Don't say that, Carleen.

Carlene 21:28

I know it is, it is. It's it's I know, I know. And and and if if you are like the third or fourth, like I think it's speaking volumes when the third person is telling me. So yeah, got some work to do. But no, I do want to feel better because I mean, it's draining, very draining. But yeah, it is hereditary too. Actually, so I found out the hard like I found out the it's always the hard way you find out when something's wrong, when you're at the bottom, and like, and then after I went to the doctor, the hospital, and everything, and had to do All the things, it's like I yell at my aunt because I'm like, You're the only one in our family that would have said anything. I'm like, why didn't you tell me to check for this? You know, but this is probably part of the journey for me too. So I do want to say, so getting back to you as a whole and what you're doing here. Like, I feel like we just had like a what do you call it? A mini intervention for me. So you know what I mean? Like, not an intervention, but more a way of like a way to like you're helping me help myself, and hopefully I will help someone else in in the interim as well. That's that's my whole hope. But everything that you're working on currently, you said you've already you're working, did you say you finished another book? Did I get that right?

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yes, I'm just finishing up a new book on fertility called The Road to Better Fertility, but it's not quite available. You can sign up for early access on our website, though.

Carlene 22:49

Oh, okay. Okay. But in your in your path to here and now, like you are a health tech pioneer author and reproductive acupuncturist with over 20 years of clinical practice experience. So as a reproductive acupuncturist, can you explain to my listener what exactly you do to help your clients?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Okay, so I'm I was a reproductive acupuncturist for 20 years, not in practice anymore. So, but what an acupuncturist, a fertility acupuncturist or a reproductive acupuncturist does to help you with your fertility is exactly what we do at Conceival, but they do it in person. So they interview you, they figure out all the underlying issues, and then they match them to categories we have in Chinese medicine, like yin deficiency, like diagnostic patterns, yang deficiency, blood deficiency, qi deficiency. And then based on that pattern diagnosis, is choosing herbs and acupuncture and food and all of these things that will be addressing those underlying issues. So say you only have one day of bleeding, but it's not because, like part of the reason you have your anemic, Carlene, is because of the hemorrhagic bleeding from the clotting and the fibroids. And so the reality is that, you know, in order that the fix for that isn't is is to figure out all the things that are causing the clotting and resolve those. That makes a much bigger difference. And so, yeah, so we take all of that information to then create the outcome of, you know, what is a personalized plan to help fix this. So then she gets a virtual care team in our clinic. At the acupuncturist, then I would then plan her menus. I would choose what herbs she would take. I would tell her how to exercise and all of those things, and then choose points to support that. So for this person who has only have one day of bleeding, maybe it's because they're not digesting well. If you're not digesting well, then it's the points are then points to help digestion, not fertility points. It's to use the to address the underlying issues. And if there are points to help encourage blood production, if you have a lot of clotting in your blood, there are points to resolve blood stasis, like for you. And so then the acupuncture is doing that, and then each week monitoring you, checking your tongue, feeling your pulse, seeing how you're progressing, and then modifying. I always say Chinese medicine is the first real personalized medicine, because each week the doctor should be making up a new treatment based on exactly how you're presenting today, as opposed to, oh, yeah, PCOS, let's give you metformin. It's like, well, you have PCOS, you have you have insulin resistance, let's change your diet, let's give you a couple of targeted supplements, let's give you some strategies to help you cope with stress because stress is really a big player in polycystic ovarian syndrome. Kind of nobody talks about.

Carlene 25:36

Yeah. Can you elaborate on that then? Because I I know someone with PCOS, I mean, and I know someone with endometriosis too. And so the thing, the thing with both, I mean, one obviously affects pregnancy. Uh, they both do, but I think they do too, yeah. Yeah, but it's not impossible to get pregnant. I realize now that the misconception is with number one, endometriosis, that you that your chances of getting pregnant are limited, which is not true.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

You know, they are. You do have a lower likelihood of both getting and staying pregnant

Acupuncture PCOS Endo And Stress

SPEAKER_01 26:10

with both endo and PCOS. Um, with PCOS, it's it's a lot harder to stay pregnant because their temperatures are so low, they typically run low on progesterone. With endo, we see so much inflammation. It is absolutely possible for people with both of those conditions to get pregnant because both of those conditions, if you look at the medical data, every study shows that in the end, the best way to treat and manage these conditions is through personalized diet, lifestyle, and behavioral health. Especially PCOS is so connected to how we live. And you said, can I elaborate on stress in PCOS? So when we get stressed, right, our heart rate variability goes down, we go into flight or fright. As soon as we go into flight or fright, we start not having access to a lot of resources, especially metabolic resources, because it's not the time to be digesting. It is the time to take every bit of energy and explode it so that you could, you know, kill a tiger or pick up a train off your baby, something ridiculous and impossible. And so what happens is because the body thinks that there's uh imminent danger, it floods the system with adrenaline. That adrenaline is very inflammatory. It really hurts your eggs and your ovaries, which makes your hormones get dysregulated. It causes inflammation in the ovaries and the uterus, and it disrupts the whole circadian rhythm, the pituitary ovarian access. So we want to really make sure that we're giving her tools that not like, first of all, most women don't realize how stressed their bodies are because we we just get one way in the world that we can be, and that's like cute and smiley. Yeah. And if we're mad, we're a big old bitch. And if we're sad, we're a big fat baby. And so we just, you know, I have worked with tens and tens and tens of thousands of women, and they're all the same. Doesn't matter where they come from, where they were their religion, how much money they have, they're all the same. We're just trying to survive like the expectations that society has on us. And so we eat a lot of garbage. We eat shit all day and put on a smile around it. And that internalized stress hurts our bodies a lot. And we see it, we can, if we look at her heart rate variable, heart rate variability, which is not heart rate, it's how much variation is between heart rate, you can see a lot more easily how stressed her body is. It's really a measure of resilience to stress. And so we have to help women to start to connect with themselves, with their emotional selves more often and check in like how did that feel? And what did I think about that? And give ourselves permission to be sad, mad, outraged, happy, delighted, like extending the range of what's permissible because every time we hold in those feelings, we cause stagnation, and that stagnation causes inflammation. And we do it a lot. We go into flight or fright, and then we're we're we're working against ourselves. Yeah.

Carlene 28:56

In my state and age with technology, like what do you say to women who are doing so many things? You know what I mean? Like running a household, working, you know what I mean? And and trying to manage a household. Like I I feel like we have to take I I talked to someone who today and she said to me, you know, Carleen, I wanted this life because it looks so nice when my mom, you know, when I saw my mom living her life and with the kids and everything. And now that I have this life, it's hard. It's a roller coaster. It's not it's not that great. It's not that great. No, it's hard. It's hard. Like you we gotta choose our hard. I think uh with anything in life, you gotta choose your heart. What's what are you going to do? And I and it takes a village too. Like if you don't have the help, it's so much harder, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

It's such a good question. And I think about it a lot because I, you know, talking to women all day long, you know, I'm always if they t like everybody's really tired. So I'm always trying to figure out why are they so tired. I'm always asking, why is that? Why is that? Why is that? And you know, I'll say, tell me what your day is like, and they'll be like, Well, I get up at 4 30 in the morning and then I go to the gym before my family gets up, and then I come back and make breakfast for everybody and make lunches for my kids, and I take my kids to school, and then I come back and take a shower, and then I go to work, and I work till seven o'clock on the way home. I d I pick up groceries at the grocery store, and then I come and I make dinner and I feed my kids and I bathe my kids and I read stories to them, and then I fold some money and then I go to bed. Oh my god. And I was like, Wow, what in the royal fuck? That's the worst life I've ever heard of him. And I said, Where the hell is your husband in all this? Yeah, you're doing everything. And too often they're like, Well, he's really busy. I'm like, girl, you are really busy. Your energy is a two. And in the hard conversation, it's kind of like people always want to say, like, hey, I I saw this cleanse on TikTok, I saw this parasite cleanse, detox, hair bullshit. It's all bullshit. Your liver is the only thing it can detox itself. But to actually detox your liver and to detox yourself, what that means is you actually have to get rid of the things that are making you toxic, like the things that are so good and fun, like alcohol, weed, sugar, you know, gossiping, like depressing TV and droom scrolling social media. If you want to detox, you have to take those things away and your body will naturally detox. You don't have to pay for anything. And the same thing, like most of our health problems, I think, come from this need to consume and to live beyond our means. And then that puts a lot of financial pressure on families. Like, if I was gonna do it all over again, I would live some a lot. I would try to live way under my means and I would pay for more help. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like I would live like more out in the suburbs. I mean, I wanted to live in like the coolest part of Austin, but I would live way more out in the suburbs where I could have had, because I was a single mom my whole time, where I could have had like not a live-in, but kind of like something close. Like somebody who would come every day and just spend two hours picking up the house and making a little dinner for us, like that would have made the biggest difference. And so my advice is obviously you can't just sell your houses and you know do all these things, but if you have a five-year plan to think about like what kind of life, what do you how do you want your day to feel each day? How does your day feel now? Like those people, and I've been there too, where you just go, go, go, go, go, and at nine o'clock, you're like, oh my God, I can finally get in bed. And then you're like, and the sleep's not good because you just drank a bunch of wine because you were so stressed, you know. Thinking about like how could we drastically lower the caught our cost of living, pay off all the debt, like living debt-free. And like, you know, I'm I made a ton of money when I had my clinics. And since I've been building conceivable, you know, I'm kind of a bootstrapper, I take a super low salary, like 50 grand. It's a very low salary because I want to put all the money back into the company because I don't want to sell it to investors. And so I went from being able to buy whatever I wanted to really being, especially as a single mom, on a strict budget. And then I started realizing, like, wow, if you're debt-free and you live within your means, you can make very little money and still feel really good and still have money to take trips and things like that. But it does take a decision to make that, you know, start switching. And to not, like, as you start increasing your salary, which I suspect will happen when you have more free time to be creative and joyous, then you want to just not what happens is then you make a little bit more and you're like, okay, good, I can move into a better house. I can move into a better house, I can move into a better house. And like my first house that I bought in Austin, it's very expensive to live in Austin now, was $24,000.

unknown 33:26

What?

Carlene 33:27

It is in some of the best real estate now.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Wow, what a time, what a time. At that time, my mom and dad also lived in a suburb of Dallas. Their house was $170,000 in those days, right? That was in the 80s, it must be. Yeah, yeah. And so this house was $24,000. It used to be close to the airport, but the airport theoretically was moving. And so buying this house, of course, I was too dumb to keep it, it's now worth like four million dollars, right? In 20 years. And and now it used it felt really far out of town, and now it is like in the inner circle of, you know, like central Austin. So these are the things you think about is like try to stay where you are, stay live within your means. Think

Burnout Detox Myths And Social Media

SPEAKER_01 34:10

about like what do I really want versus what I need, you know. I think that like, especially on social media, TikTok is really good at selling you stuff because it really learns what you're interested in. And a lot of UGC creators are so flipping persuasive. But what I do is I just put it in my cart. I just add it all to my cart. It gives me the dopamine of like, I just got something. And then once a month I go back through and see, like, okay, what do I actually need out of all of this? You know, when I'm not like two o'clock in the morning, you know, susceptible, right? Because then you're like tired, like, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a good idea. I need that five pack of like new, you know, booty boosting leggings or whatever, you know. Have you seen those? They're kind of they can't. No, I haven't. They have these leggings, it like basically have a bra strap in the back, and then you put it in there and then you pull your butt up and it like wow.

Carlene 34:58

I just got a shapewear like to help me, but like like you, I try to limit my social media intake. Now I'm a doom scroller and I I you know I have my own mental health concerns, so I have to try and limit. So I don't use TikTok as much to promote or use it as a platform for what it is. It's a great platform, but my goodness, do you really have to discipline yourself with that platform?

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Because the trick with TikTok is as soon as you start getting in, boy, it like a month ago, I was really in a dark place on TikTok, right? Just all the political stuff was making me crazy. But then, you know, after a few days, I was like, ugh, I just feel stressed and anxious. I'm not sleeping well, this is not good. Then if you just go back into the search, and like I like Alan Watts, he's a writer and thinker about like self-improvement and stuff. And so I just started like typing in motivation, peaceful, good news. And then all of a sudden your feed becomes something that feeds you with good stuff. Do you know what I mean? You just have to not get pulled into some of the you know the other things, yeah. But there are some really funny things on social media.

Carlene 36:06

There are, there are politically right now. Learn the trends. So as the TikTok fertility queen, more like the acupuncturist, what is your mission on the future of like, I guess, technology? Like, I mean, this is it's here. There isn't go away, it's not going away. And so, what's your opinion on it? Like your perspective, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Well, my vision for the future for all women and people in the period with periods on the planet is that they are using conceivable and our app. And the reason for that is that it has been built with so much care and love. Like, what I know is that all we do so much and we are so good at is caring for everyone else. But we literally do not get cared for very much. And like I so many of my friends are like, just a crumb of appreciation would go so far, you know, just a crumb of gentleness. And and so the future is that like that what conceivable is for fertility right now will evolve over the next 18 months into an operating system for women's health that is a complete virtual care team for her. Like right now in the app, you get a therapist, you get a nutritionist, you get a chef, you get uh you an acupuncturist. So if you're going to acupuncture, your acupuncturist can chat with AI Me about what to do and what not to do, what herbs to do, what points to do, a tongue analyzer, a data analyst. And at any time, you can ask her questions. Like, I just don't understand what's happening if you're wearing a ring and it's wearing that your blood sugar has suddenly been high inside the app Kai, Kirsten AI, that's me, that's your fertility coach. She sends a note to the chef and says, Hey, Carlene's blood sugar has been high this week. Let's up her protein and fiber and fat. Let's see if we can stabilize it with food. Then she sends a note also to the therapist and says, Carleen's blood sugar's been high. Will you check in with her and see if anything's unusual going on that she needs some support on? This is the kind of care that we deserve that somebody is with you available to help you every single day in a material way that teaches you how to get a new outcome in whatever it is that you desire. Mm-hmm. Yes. Starting with age seven all the way to death.

Carlene 38:14

Yeah. I have one more question before we wrap this up. So for women in their 40s, I mean, this is this is this is what started this whole journey for me. I'm 41 and and I started it um when I was 40 and the whole idea. And so I think with perimenopause and menopause and you know, just women's health in general, what do you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Well, I think we have a huge opportunity in like the over 35 to really take care of women in a new way. Because it's it's even if it's possible to even think this, menopause is more taboo than even periods, right? Yeah, people just because women who are going through perimenopause and menopause, as you all know, if you're listening and you've been through it, you can get so gosh dang irritable and you know, hot flashes and all these things can really make it tough to just be a balanced and delightful person. And so I think everybody's afraid to talk about it. But I think that what we're seeing is that like when we did we did a pilot in Conceivable to measure how effective it was at helping people to get pregnant and to measure how much it increased their likelihood of natural conception. What was interesting is the highest improvement were women who were 36 to 44. So under 36, they increase the likelihood of getting pregnant by 150%. Over 36, they increase their likelihood of getting pregnant by 260%. Why? Because I think as we're entering, when we get to 35, we are taking even less good care of ourselves because we have more and more responsibilities. Our families are growing, our even if it's not our immediate family, if it's, you know, our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, we have more and more responsibilities. So we are able to take less and less to nurture and care for ourselves. And so then when we go through menopause, we're having harder and harder times because we're entering that phase more depleted than we've ever been in our whole life. That's not a criticism, please. I've I'm exactly with you. I don't want women to be like, she's just, you know, blaming us for our menopause. No, it's uh if you think about it, it's an opportunity to really realize that our body can tolerate a lot of all the transitions that we go through, but we need to we need to care for it in a different way in order to support it to having harmonious transitions.

Carlene 40:27

Wow. That is definitely an enlightenment there. I I I am speechless. It's it's so true. This has been amazing. I mean, I thank you so much for like giving me advice on my health. I didn't expect that, but I think it's it's it's giving me food for thought. It's like all the things that you mentioned in the conceivable app that I do for myself, having a therapist. And um I will be an advocate for that for sure. Like mental health, like have like people don't talk about having a therapist like it's a thing, but I think it's important. Like it really is. As I get older and as someone who's had a not so pleasant journey in life when I

The Conceivable App Perimenopause And Wrap

Carlene 41:05

was younger, you know what I mean? I I went through a lot. I'm sure you did too. Like, I mean, you were a gymnast. I danced for 10 years, and so I know the routine, you know. I could have been a dancer had I stuck on with that. So I totally get your journey to here and now, and and I I appreciate the fact that you want to help more women. I mean, you've helped 10,000 women struggling with fertility. So I'm you're definitely paving the way there for since I'm working towards a hundred million sisters. Yes, okay. I'm I'm there with you. If I can help you get there, so be it. You know what I mean? Like we all have to help each other, I think, as women. And I think like it's better to help than to compete. I I really feel like it is, you know, like we should be helping each other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

I mean, it's just like the pool of opportunity is so huge. Like, even if we try to help them all in every way, we can't. Do you know what I mean? So we have to come together.

SPEAKER_03 42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

No, even in my meditation, yeah. In my medit, like in my meditation, I do a bunch of visualization. One is like that, like literally, I'm holding hands with every woman in the universe. Wow. And I'm like, all right, ladies, let's do this. Like that, it's not me doing it, that it's like a collective of all female on the whole planet. Like, if we it's like using that energy to galvanize like courage and formidableness, that's not a word, but you know, fortitude.

Carlene 42:28

Yeah, that's beautiful. I think uh like I I meditate as well, and so it's it starts with you, and so I'm all for it. And so with that being said, Miss Kirsten Karchmer, you said you're you're all online, you're on TikTok, you're on all the things. So where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

The easiest thing is to go to our website, consumable.com, and uh you can find me on TikTok, uh, your fertility expert, or if you want to look at period stuff, the period expert. So you one is yours. I have uh so many impersonators. So if it doesn't have at least a hundred thousand, like people will be like, uh, you only have 12 followers. I'm like, no, that's not my account. So make sure that you're in the right one. Basically, if you if you follow the wrong one, they're gonna try and sell you psychic readings by me, and that's not me. So look for at least like a hundred thousand followers to make sure you're in the right place.

Carlene 43:22

With that being said, I hope, yeah, this is not the end. And and maybe we'll have you back on the show to you know dig a little deeper and you know, maybe I'll tell you about the recovery. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

I would love that. Will you please send me an email in three months? How you did?

Carlene 43:37

Yeah, for sure. I will. I'm gonna work towards it. This is like I must, I must, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Remind me in the email to say, hey, uh, you were on my podcast because I might just forget the scenario.

Carlene 43:48

I'll be like, Definitely, of course, for sure. We will definitely do that. I'm Carleen, and this is Diva tonight with Coach Thin Karchmer. Thank you so much for making the time to be here. And to share your knowledge, world of knowledge. Thank you. I appreciate it. Ah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Thanks for listening to Diva Tonight. Follow us on Instagram at DivaOnTheRadio. That's Diva with two eyes. And don't forget to follow us on TikTok at Diva on the Radio. For more clips and conversations, you'll love. Want to share your thoughts or send us a message? Text us anytime at divatonite.buzzsprout.com. Until next time, stay fabulous.