How to Get Pregnant with Blocked Fallopian Tubes | Expert Tips on Opening Blocked Tubes Naturally

 Hey, it's Dr. Amatma, host of Egg MeatSperm, and this is the best podcast to get all of the vital information that you need to support your fertility journey holistically for you and your partner, because fertility takes two.

Welcome Mahesh, it's so great to have you here. I'm very excited to talk about fallopian tubes, what to do when they're blocked, and how to become a mother. even with block fallopian tubes. So what are these fallopian tubes and why are they so important? Fantastic. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Dr.

Umatma. So fallopian tubes are these really thin 10 to 13 centimeter long tubes that connect our ovaries to our uterus, right? That's basically what they do. What is not very commonly known is that all conception, all healthy conception happens only inside the fallopian tube. Okay. So there's an egg that's released from the ovary.

It gets picked up by these little finger like projections on one of the fallopin tubes. In goes the egg, the sperm enters through the vaginal passage, swims through the uterus, into the fallopin tube where it fertilizes the egg. So the only place where you can have a healthy baby begin to grow for the first three to five days of life is inside the fallopin tubes.

That's what makes them so crucial. Yeah, and, and that's fascinating because like the nature and how that works is like the egg has to be released, it's released into these fallopian tubes and the sperm actually has to get there and meet the egg in the tube in order to fertilize it. So we won't talk about the sperm today, but that part is also really important.

They have to get to the egg in order to fertilize it. All right, so these fallopian tubes can unfortunately get blockages and there are different types of blockages. Can we talk about that for a second? Surely. Yeah. So fallopian tubes can get blocked very easily from simple things like pelvic infections that you don't even realize that you have, right?

So unlike a vaginal infection, where you may have discharge or foul odor, you may have no sense that you actually have a deeper pelvic infection. And those infections, when the body tries to To clean it up, it's going to get the whole battle takes place inside the tube, and now you're going to have strictures there.

That's one possibility. Second, a lot of women think that it's normal to have pain during their periods or just before their periods. But this can often happen as we call in functional medicine, due to a condition that's called called estrogen dominance, but that's by ratio, right? So it's relative estrogen dominance.

There are two hormones, estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen builds everything that you think of, like the inner lining of the uterus. Progesterone's job is to keep it firm, etc. When you have too much estrogen, you can have little bands which form, which can, you know, pull the, uh, fallopian tube out of place.

So that's the second thing that can happen. Again, when you have an infection, you can have water filled inside the tube, and this is called a hydrosalpins. The salpins is what the tube is called, and there's hydro or water, infected water inside the tube. So all of these things can lead to the tubes becoming blocked or poorly functional.

Mm hmm. Yeah. So how does a woman know if she has a blocked fallopian tube? Yeah. So this is the other very tricky part. There is only one test that can really tell us, which is at least a non invasive test. So let's divide it into two categories. One is a surgical answer, one is a non surgical answer. So when you go into the OBGYN's office, there is a test called hysterosalpingography HSG.

It's just a fancy word for filling water inside your uterus and seeing if the water, when it gets filled inside the uterus with a dye, whether the dye actually passes through. through the tubes and spills out onto the ovaries. That's the simplest way to find out. And of course, it's an outpatient procedure.

It takes barely 20 minutes. And if it's done by a good OBGYN, they will take care to give you preventative or prophylactic painkillers for the process. It's not that the dye is harmful, but the pressure with which they push it in is very high. that can cause some pain or spasms. So that's the best way first round to tell whether you have, uh, you know, tubes that are open.

Some cases when that is not clear, you may need a surgical intervention, which is, you know, called a laparoscopy, where they will make a little incision near your navel, put in a camera and a light, and they will see if the tube is freely moving. or is it adhering or stuck to any surface? Those are the only two ways that you can really tell that you might have tubes that are actually blocked.

Yeah, okay, so you can um, kind of basically like have a visual. of what's happening inside the reproductive area, reproductive organs. And this dye kind of flushes in. It's, it highlights whether the, the water went all the way through or it didn't. Are there, um, in terms of things like fibroids or scar tissue, are those things also going to maybe contribute to a blockage and would they show on an HSG?

Yes, depending upon the position of the fibroids, it could actually lead to a blockage of the tube because the point at which the tubes attach to the uterus, if a fibroid is going right there, then you could have an obstruction, but it's usually rare. for a fibroid to cause a fallopian tube obstruction.

However, the adhesions that you mentioned, if there's any surgery that's happened at any point of time, the body will heal itself with scar tissue that forms and that scar tissue can begin to pull or obstruct the fallopian tube. That is very much possible. There is a thing called ectopic pregnancy, the, a pregnancy that implants in kind of the wrong place.

a lot. I think there are women that have maybe had an ectopic pregnancy that don't realize the impact of that on a fallopian tube. So let's talk about that. Yes, absolutely. So like I said, the little embryo spends the first three days of its life inside the tube. After that, the tube has these little hair like projections, or cilia, that are supposed to roll this little embryo down into the uterus where it implants, and it begins to grow inside the mother's womb.

However, if this doesn't happen, if this last rolling down doesn't happen, the pregnancy could begin growing inside the tube itself. And remember, at the thinnest point. That tube is just one millimeter in, in width. That's really, really small. Now that could pose a danger to the mother. And therefore the doctor who's looking after the patient will choose to end or terminate this pregnancy.

It can be done medically or it can be done surgically. When it's done medically, you're given, um, uh, you know, steroidal medicine, methotrexate, and that helps to remove that little embryo away from the point where it was growing inside the tube. or you might need surgery where you have to surgically actually remove that little embryo from there.

Both of these can lead to scarring of the inner wall of the tube. And this could pose a threat for the next pregnancy. So there is a greater chance any woman who has an ectopic pregnancy has a nearly. 30 percent higher chance of having a second ectopic when she goes in for another pregnancy if it happens on the same tube.

Those are the population wide statistics. And so yes, ectopic pregnancies can indeed lead to fallopian tube damage, and women who have been through one should be aware of this for the next one. Fallopian tubes tend to be blocked. In some women, and then they go back for another HSG and suddenly they're no longer blocked, right?

So, there's, uh, what's the, I think the statistic is like about 60 percent of women that had shown a blocked fallopian tube when they went for a second HSG actually was clear. Um, can you, can you, You have some ideas on what might be going on. Yeah. So, you know, that statistic is probably for a specific kind of blockage of the fallopian tube, right?

So, imagine that these tubes are 10 to 13 centimeters long. right. So one of the things that can happen is you go in for a test and you want to know if your tubes are open, your doctor puts in the liquid with the dye and tries to push it through with high pressure. Like I said, if for any reason your body spasms at that time because it can't stand that pressure that's going through, you will have what's called a proximal blockage.

which means the tubes will kind of collapse and not allow the fluid to go through. This will generally happen on both sides. So when you read the report, it says bilateral proximal blockage. And there's usually a question mark. That's because even the radiologist knows that this may not be a real blockage.

It's actually just the high pressure at which the liquid was sent through. So such blockages do exist. if the next time around somebody gives you a proper painkiller, does the procedure well, there's no blockage that's found. So now you have a blockage that was apparently there that's no longer there, right?

So this is one case where you could have a clearance of an earlier blockage. Second kind of blockage that happens is Sometimes as a remnant of an infection or there is some phlegm like substance, you know, like the snot we get in our noses, you could have some of that that's there inside the tubes as well.

And actually doing it, pushing the, you know, a test, um, when you put in the liquid at high pressure, that itself could flush some part of this blockage out. And by the time you go the second time, the body's also healed itself. So you have open tubes. So proximal blockages. And loose phlegm like, uh, substances that are there, certainly we have seen it heal in the next test.

Mm hmm. Um, and, and that's wonderful because like block fallopian tubes are problematic and make it a lot harder for people to get pregnant. How, um, how often do you feel like. Women should just get an HSG if they've struggled with conception versus, um, like, women that maybe are at higher risk. Because I get this question a lot, like, not everyone wants to go through the procedure.

Women don't always, like, have the money to go for the procedure. It's kind of an expensive, costly test. So, I'm curious if you feel like everyone should just get an HSG if they've struggled with fertility or if they can say, okay, I maybe have never had unprotected sex. I maybe never don't have any history of illness, a pelvic infection.

Is it possible to bypass the need for a test if you're not sure? I'm certain that you don't have a blockage. Sure. Yeah. And I completely understand and you know, appreciate the point that you're making. See, the way we look at it in our clinic is, unfortunately or fortunately, we're often a clinic which is a port of last call.

They come to us after everything's said. Isn't that funny? It should be the first time. First up, do the natural stuff first. Yeah, yeah, they just don't do that, right? They just go through three rounds of failed IVF and then they come to us. And there have, you know, we've had at least 10 women that I can think of offhand just in the last year and a half where they failed with IVF.

And they came back and their tubes were open and we got them pregnant naturally. I mean, they got themselves pregnant naturally. We just helped them with all the, you know, the right interventions. That's all we did. We aligned them to nature and nature helped them fall pregnant. But yes, I would say at least before resorting to IVF, right, you should Consider an HSG as an important sort of watershed before you do that.

Because remember, you know, all of IVF technology was invented about 42 years ago, right? The first test tube baby just turned 42 last year, right? So I don't think I knew that. I don't know why I didn't know that. Louise Brown was the first one, right? And her mother had blocked fallopian tubes. So the only true indication for IVF at that time was that you must have your tubes completely blocked.

Those were the only people IVF was able to help, right? Because if the tubes are blocked, the egg and the sperm can't meet. So let's make them meet in the lab. We'll create an embryo and put it back into the uterus. That's how they saw it. And therefore, the, the number one reason to go for IVF is if you have blocked tubes.

But if you're getting escalated to IVF before you find out that your tubes are blocked, then you're really missing out on a trick or two because IVF is going to be a lot more expensive than an HSG test. You know, even if it's out of pocket, even if it's copay, you're going to pay a whole lot more for IVF than you're going to for an HSG test.

That said. In general, we should know that normal healthy couples can take up to seven times, seven, uh, you know, months to, to actually conceive. That's the average statistic. Most people don't realize that, right? So they, they're a little late. Um, nowadays, families are started late. Women have careers as much as men do.

Everybody is choosing life partners later in life or starting a family later in life. And so, And therefore, you already arrive at that 37, 38, 39 kind of mark, and you're kind of wondering where you should go. So my simple advice would be, if you've been trying naturally, and if you haven't conceived, and if you're thinking of going for IVF, certainly get your HSG test done before that, at least.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think it's pretty common for IVF clinics to do HSG before they do IVF. But, um, I think for all those other people that are like, well, we've been trying for a year. We're still not pregnant. We're still, um, not sure what's happening. Um, we've been suggested IVF, but don't really want to do it yet.

Those are the people that are in that gray zone that I wonder about, like, how frequently should we be considering that they have to do an HSG versus it would be really advisable to go do an HSG. Um, and I have that conversation so often, people are always like, you know, By the time they come to us, they've been on average trying for one to three years.

Some of, most of them have been through IVF, but not everybody. Um, so that's a pretty extended period of time. And one of the initial conversations I have is just like, have you done an HSG? Will you consider doing an HSG? And that's, I don't know, that one has a big hurdle. They'll do all kinds of other testing, but HSG is harder to get.

Yeah, I think, you know, the internet is full of horror stories of how painful HSG can be, right? And this is where you really need very good partners who do HSG. We're lucky we have a few like that in our practice. And therefore, you know, they, you know, the allopath, the conventional doctor is ready to give painkillers at the drop of a hat, really serious painkillers for a migraine, but they know that this procedure is going to be so painful, but the prophylactics or the preventive medicines used are often.

not sufficient. You know, you have a lady who's, um, you know, medically on the overweight side of things. The BMI is higher as per CDC standards, et cetera, but the dose is not adjusted for that. And we often find that women who are carrying weight around the abdominal region are going to experience more pain in an HSG.

So you give them a higher dose of a preventative medicine and you can have an absolutely painless HSG experience. And this is Crucial, right? That's the reason why people shy away from it other than the expense. Um, you know, um, so I feel that that's something that does need to be done. If you want to still be in the natural space, if you still want to try naturally, imagine that poor little pipe is the only place where you can create life.

If you're not going to find out if it's open, then you're really shooting in the dark. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And even, um, we just had a woman recently who has, uh, one side is blocked partially and the other side is open. And she was like, Oh my God, do I need to do IVF? And I said, Well, It's only a partial block on one side, but the other side is fully open.

So we really just have to figure out, like, it's not the worst case scenario. It's not going to mean automatically that you have to do IVF. There are so many options that they have. I'd love to share a little, you know, a piece of hope for this lady and for everybody else. We've had at least, again, if I think offhand, three or four conceptions with a single tube.

And in those, in two of those cases, it was the opposite ovary that ovulated. We know because we did a follicular scan, and we saw that the ovulation was happening, for example, on the right side, on the right ovary, the right tube was blocked. The left one was open. And this is known in medical literature, since you have the fingers and they are free moving inside the pelvic space.

The opposite tube will reach out and take in this egg. It's called transmigration of a oocyte. It happens. It's known in the medical literature. So you can have ovulation from this side and pregnancy happens in the other tube. Wow. Okay, you're blowing my mind. I'm gonna have to look this up now because that has not ever even crossed my mind.

So that's fascinating. So how does I mean, all kinds of questions. Like, how does the tube know to like grab the egg from the other side? So remember, it's all chemistry within the body, right? So the egg that's being released is actually releasing the chemicals. That's how the fallopian tube knows that something's coming.

coming. It's regularly brushing the ovary, no doubt. But if there is an egg sitting on the opposite side and there's all the brushing is happening here, it will reach out and pull in the other side as well. So it knows from the chemical signaling that happens. So again, I was, my mind was blown when I saw this happen.

So I went back to the literature and I noticed, yes, there are single cases only reported, but it is reported as a happening, right? So you've seen. Blow up, uh, things that call you into a diner or into a motel, right? Have you seen those little blow up things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Your fallopian tubes are like that at the, at the fibrial end.

They're moving all over the pelvic space. And so it's not like it's limited only to this ovary. It'll reach out and take it from the other ovary as well. That's incredible. Yeah. Okay. You just blew my mind. I did not Like that it just like goes to the power of our bodies, right? Like the innate wisdom that is present in our bodies that we can't like magically make it happen, but the body knows what to do.

And we just have to like, you know, trust always tell every patient who walks through our door that the only thing nature wants from you is for you to be happy and healthy, and it wants you to produce the next generation. So there's just preservation and procreation. So if you're having trouble. There's a good chance the problem is with the preservation.

You take care of your own health, your foundations, and nature is going to find a way to turn you into a parrot. That's all nature wants. It doesn't care about your career, doesn't care about most other that are man. It only wants the next human being on the planet. So you align with nature and you can see all kinds of crazy miracles happen in the clinic.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Thank you for sharing those miracles. That's,

um, okay. So let's get into what I'm sure so many listeners are thinking about, which is what, are there some techniques? Are there some ways to open block tubes if both sides are blocked and, Um, what can, what can they do? So, we'll start with the easiest ones, the ones you can do at home, and we'll kind of go up the ladder where you more see the functions, right?

All right. So the first thing that we would look at is castor oil packs. Right. So if you've got, you know, it's, it's easy enough. You take flannel cloth, everybody knows the YouTube is full of how to make a castor oil pack using castor oil packs regularly. So in naturopathic circles, we would say three days a week, at least.

Produce the deep heat that's going to happen and that's going to penetrate through the abdominal region. It can break up strictures. So certainly the simplest and first thing to do are castor oil packs, right? So that's, I love them. Everyone is doing them. Isn't it fantastic for all pelvic, you know, congestion as we call it, right?

So in all of our naturopathic circles in Ayurveda, in acupressure, we say there is pelvic congestion. There's heaviness in the abdomen and castor oil is beautiful to penetrate that heat and get it through. Right. So that I would say is step number one, certainly do it at home, et cetera. Right. And alongside that using just giving the body all the raw materials that it needs.

So make sure you're getting all the colored vegetables and you're getting all the antioxidants in, uh, you need to make sure that you're drinking enough water. I, you know, too many women ignore this very, very important thing. You I'm just drinking 30 milliliters per kilogram of body weight. I'm sorry. I'm not good with ounces and pounds.

You'll have to do that. I say it's, it's, um, it might, I think our correlations are probably similar. So half your body weight in ounces is what we say. Yes. Yes. That's, that's the correct. Yes. So that much water, really healthy Celtic salt, right? So that's one of the best and cheapest investments you can make.

You buy a one kg jar, it's going to last you a whole year, but you're going to try and get in the electrolytes. So you need the sodium, chloride. and you need the 82 other little minerals that are there in the Celtic salt and that will help your body achieve the right acid alkaline balance throughout, right?

So the body just alternates in terrain, mouth super alkaline, stomach super acidic, small intestine super alkaline, LI, large intestine acidic. If you get the salt and water in, you see reset that whole balance. And again, you will find that your periods become smoother. There isn't what we call reverse flow of the, of the endometrial tissue, right?

So there's a prevention of further worsening of the fallopian tubes. So one of the theories as to why fallopian tubes gets blocked is that they could be endometrial tissue that goes back in reverse. And there is a thought that that could be happening. So again, we find really healthy diet. And like I said, very good hydration, right?

So combine this with the castor oil. That's something that you can do at home for sure. Okay, getting beyond this for especially people in the U. S. There is one organization that has, I think, about 12 locations in the U. S. Where they do a physical external massage, which is called clear base. Yes, Yes, so you're aware of CPT and clear passage therapies, certainly in the alternate medicine space.

So there are Tuina practitioners as well in the U. S. Thanks to the entire, uh, you know, uh, Nixon trip to the, to China, which you have a thriving, uh, you know, uh, Oriental medicine, um, uh, pockets at least in the U. S. They're very good with internal massages, deep organ massages that are called Twina. So Twina can help you to release strictures in which are holding the fallopian tube from the outside, that's for sure.

Clear passage therapies, again, 20 hours of therapy, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening, over a week or so, seems to produce very good results. They're published in very difficult to publish journals. So, you know, they've gotten to fertility, sterility, which is, you know, really the bastion of conventional fertility medicine.

So there they have proven that CPT can indeed work. It's gentle, it's non invasive and it's zero pain. We've had patients from India who visited the U. S. to get CPT done, and they've. saying that it was absolutely painless. They were, you know, so well, well taken care of, et cetera. So CPT shout out. We don't have any association with them, but so they're a fantastic group.

They're doing it as in space. Yeah. And there are places even in the U S. now where you have thriving Ayurvedic practices, right? So one of the techniques we do in India for our patients is called Uttara Basti. Uttara literally means northwards and Basti is a kind of cleansing that you do. So you have the, you know, you introduce, um, um, medicated herbals into the, um, uterine passage.

And you allow for them to seep through the fallopian tubes. This is done for about six days in the reproductive cycle. And it's done over usually two or three cycles, depending upon the severity of the blockage. This procedure I have seen online, at least is available in the U S as well. There are practitioners, especially in California and other areas that are a little friendlier to alternative or more holistic.

at Uttarabasti, that's certainly another possibility within conventional space. We've only seen two kinds of blockages get cleared up. One is, like I said, wasn't a real blockage. The test itself, the HSG test opened up the little phlegm that was stuck. That's one way of doing it. A second way would be surgical.

There's a little wire that a surgeon introduces into blockages. It can only be done if the blockage is in the first half of the tube. So if it's about 10 centimeters, it has to be within about three to five centimeters. And even there, you know, there's no guarantee that an open tube is a healthy tube.

Okay. So just because they opened it up, it doesn't mean it'll stay open. Rates of closure in surgery are up to 86 percent within the first six months. So I within six months or it closes up again within, you know, 6 percent of the cases. So that's a very nice kind of option. Uh, you know, too often it's not even suggested even by the allopaths or the conventional fertility medicine doctors, but you know, do the, you can look at the first three.

as very viable options. These are real options. These are not woo woo. These are not out there. We've seen these work in the clinic, right? We've had IVF failure back to us, tubes opened up, gone back to conceive naturally. So those would all be our options for opening up the tubes. Amazing. And then there's a whole slew of what I feel like is internet noise, um, that it talks about like different supplements or herbs, or I even saw, I, I was scouring the interweb this morning to see like what, what other stuff people are saying and like turmeric, every like random stuff, like garlic.

Uh, and there are, I know there are not studies on it, but do you guys use any of those? Do you feel like they're helpful in any way? Have you seen it work? Um, I'm curious about that. Sure. So we use it in cases where the blockage is from inflammation. Right. So using turmeric, using anti inflammatories from the natural space and ashwagandha, using a guduchi or any of these kinosporas, these are all things that we would use as, um, you know, um, natural antibiotics or things that can help to resolve an infection.

But honestly, I've seen too many claims made of people who claim that tubes were blocked and they took a garlic remedy. They took a ginger remedy or X or Y or Z. I'm not saying they're lying. But one case, and maybe it wasn't really blocked, we really don't know. The problem is, if you take those at face value, and if you stop doing anything else, like if you don't do an HSG test even to find out if you're blocked anymore or not, or if you don't do any of the established alternative methods that are there, you may end up losing a lot of time.

And, you know, often people in this situation, that's the one thing that they don't have. The biological clock is ticking, the number of eggs they have left is going down. Um, so. I would say, take these literally with a pinch of salt, do it for a while, dial it into your life, but don't pin all your hopes on that.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, are there, is there anything else that you guys like to add? I think you said, um, start with castor oil packs. The, the intake of water and hydration along with minerals or Celtic salt is really important. And then the manual therapies. And there's uh, three different types of manual therapies that people can choose from.

Is there anything else that you would add that? Yeah. So the one thing that I would add, because again, you have a lot of people watching from the U. S. and this is freely, is, is easily available, is acupuncture. I have seen, you know, as an acupuncturist myself, and I feel a little embarrassed. I'm bringing it on as the last thing, but there you go.

It is fantastic. It is fantastic. You can get awesome results with blocked fallopian tubes with acupuncture. It's often best when combined with Chinese herbs. So a little bit of combination of those two, enough papers published from China. You know, most of these are in the Chinese language, so we don't get to really see that data.

But, um, But they have very good results with acupuncture. So that's certainly one more modality to keep in mind. Absolutely. Well, I love it. Thank you so much for being with us today. Where can people connect with you if they would like to learn more or, or work with you? Where would be the best place to go?

Yeah. So, I mean, um, our website is Sepalika and Sepalika, um, you know, we, we'll put in maybe a link somewhere in writing or something. So stay tuned. Sepalika is basically the, um, the name for the night jasmine flower and so we picked something that we and it also has lots of medicinal properties. So we said we'll pick something that you know is healthy on the inside and beautiful on the outside.

So Sepalika fertility is the name of the clinic. If you google it you will find us at Sepalika Fertility. We are very active on Insta. Uh, I know Doc, you follow us, we follow you back. So, um, you know, Sepalika Fertility is the handle on Instagram as well. That's probably the easiest place to get in touch with us.

Drop us a comment anywhere there, DM us, and you know, somebody from the team will be happy to help you with whatever it is we can help you with. Well, thank you for being with us. Thank you for being the beacon of hope and the wealth of knowledge that you have shared today. Um, for those of you listening in, thanks for joining us and we'll be back soon with another interview that we'll, likely blow your mind.

So we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Umatma for all that you do. And you're really the beacon of hope. We're all sort of, you know, congregating around folks like you, uh, who, you know, being in the West are still holding on to this and, you know, showing people the way. Thank you for the work you do.

Yeah. Oh, thank you. If you love this episode, show us some love. And if you would love to leave me a voice memo, tell me what you love, what you hate, and what questions you have that you would like me to answer on Egg Meets Sperm. We're doing that all season long. So send me a memo. Let me know what you love.

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