Mercier Therapy for Pelvic Pain and Fertility (Episode 423)

Full Transcript: Episode 423

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

Today I’m sharing another episode in the current period pain series. And I’m sharing an episode with Dr. Jennifer Mercier, founder of Mercier Therapy. Unlike the recent episode that I released with Dr. Jennifer Mercier, in today’s episode she really dives into Mercier Therapy for pelvic pain in particular and discusses the issue with adhesions and how abdominal therapy modalities like Mercier can address some of these issues in a relatively non-invasive way outside of the surgical option. And I know many of my clients are thankful to be aware of the different possible options for treatment with regards to pelvic pain and endometriosis, because not everybody wants to jump right into surgery as their very first attempt at treatment. And so it is helpful from my perspective to talk about the different ways that pelvic pain may be managed. And there are a number of women who experience significant relief by turning to abdominal therapy modalities to physically break up adhesions and lesions and so for many it can be a part of an overall program and protocol to reduce pain, to improve symptoms, and in many cases to improve fertility. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode with Dr. Jennifer Mercier.

And today I’m very excited to welcome my guest Dr. Jennifer Mercier to the show. Founder and creator of Mercier Therapy, Jennifer Mercier has been in practice for over a decade and serves women with primary and secondary infertility, pelvic pain and surgical recovery. Most of the women that consult Dr. Mercier’s expertise have been diagnosed with endometriosis, PCOS, scar tissue, fibroids, blocked tubes, premature ovarian failure, diminished ovarian reserve, advanced age, and or hormone/thyroid imbalance. Mercier Therapy is a deep pelvic organ visceral manipulation done via the abdomen, which we’ll get into more later. Deep manipulation provides better organ mobility and increased blood flow to enhance overall pelvic organ function. And so today we’ll be talking about Mercier Therapy and the role of abdominal therapy modalities in fertility challenges. And so without further ado, welcome to the show, Dr. Mercier.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Thank you. Good morning. Well, I’m excited to have the opportunity to speak to you. I’ve only really addressed Mercier Therapy on the podcast once, although I have addressed kind of just the general overarching topic of abdominal therapy on the podcast many times. So I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to delve more into Mercier. And before we jump in, I would really be interested to hear how you came to this point — you developed a whole new technique of abdominal therapy. What drew you to this work?

Really my own history with endometriosis. I was diagnosed with a pretty severe case right from the start and experienced a lot of pain, a lot of leaky endometriomas on my ovaries that would send me to the emergency room. Eventually, I had three surgeries by the time I was 31-ish, and I just — I thought, you know, I can’t have any more surgeries. It’s too much. In each time, the recovery was more and more challenging for me. I mean, laparoscopy sounds simple. It’s a closed surgery, but it really is an intense surgery to undergo, especially if there is pathology there that needs to be removed. I tried birth control pills and the next step was Lupron, and I knew that Lupron was not something I wanted to do. So I just, after my first surgery, I thought, well, how can I manage this pain without being on loads of opiates? You know, because that certainly wasn’t the way to live. And I couldn’t do that if I was gonna go to grad school and be lucid and with it enough to be able to retain all of the information that was required of me. So I decided to start poking around in my own belly.

At that time I was a midwife, and during undergrad I found a massage therapy school as well. I just started thinking about the pelvic organs and how they’re situated and how the ligaments hold those organs in place and how endometrial tissue could set on the ligaments and the musculature and the organs. And so I thought, well, if everything’s kind of in lockdown mode, how do we get more movement and blood flow back to area to start healing from this? And so just merely with me poking around in my own tummy and pretty deeply, I was feeling some serious pain. But then I noticed as I didn’t back off from the pain and I kept working more deeply and more intensely that I could get some really amazing headway as far as healing was going. And I worked on myself every day and it was remarkable — with my next cycle I didn’t even know that the period was starting. And prior to that I would have all of this horrible cramping and headaches and bloating and breast tenderness and I felt nothing. I literally just started my period and it was like I didn’t have endometriosis. I’m like, okay, something’s going on here.

And finally I just came up with a sequence of different techniques to apply. And really for all women, we’re not all the same, but we do have the same organs and they do sit pretty much the same in the pelvis. So I just started working, I just started implementing it as a test type of thing. And it worked. It was working at eliminating pain. And then I noticed it was working for women that were having fertility challenges too, which was just awesome. So fast forward about 17 years, and here we are. And it’s been quite amazing.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

That is really fascinating. I mean, what a unique and interesting story that you have. Just given that you essentially were working on yourself and you didn’t really know what would happen and then discovered that your period pain was basically significantly improved and or gone. That’s really fascinating. So I’m just taking a moment to kind of digest that because that’s really neat. And so did you have a sense of other modalities that were out there — what prompted you to kind of work on yourself?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

I — sorry to interrupt you — I yeah, I tried several different things. I mean, I’d always been a yogi, so I’d always been in yoga. I really loved acupuncture. Really didn’t find so much pain relief with acupuncture — more than, moreover, relaxation with having to lay still for 30 minutes with needles in my body was great. I’d always gone to chiropractor, I still do, love chiropractic care. And then I’d also met an Arvigo therapist at a health fair and she just worked on me for a short bit. And then I made an appointment with not her, but one of their higher up teachers that was very close to my area geographically. And I went to see her — her name was Heidi Yost — and she worked on me in a self-care sort of consultation, I guess, if you will. And I felt like, “Wow, this work is really relaxing. It’s beautiful. It’s nice. It’s great.” But it was a very superficial touch is what I felt. And I felt as I developed Mercier Therapy that we needed to get very, very deep — not to cause pain, but we needed to get very deep to be able to access the organs.

I did a full body dissection workshop for a week — one week, full time, 40 hours. I dissected a body at the University of Chicago School of Medicine with a team of five other people and we dissected from the dermis to the adipose to the musculature to the fascial profundus all the way down to the organ level. And really, if you can see the organs in a pelvis — I was so thankful my cadaver had her organs, because most of them have had hysterectomies if they’re in the age group that our cadaver was aged out at — those organs were there, and they’re so deeply compact into the pelvis. And you probably can’t realize that until you see from a cadaver point of view — well, not the cadaver’s point of view, my point of view, looking at the cadaver — the level of the organs. You have to be very deep into your work to be really engaging into the space and touching on all of those organs.

But so I tried everything. I can honestly say I tried everything I knew to do in my power — essential oils, clean eating, which I still do, lots of supplements that were supportive, lots of movement. I mean, I was very proactive in my own case because the pain was so bad. So yeah, I can tell you I tried just about everything in my own toolbox.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, and you mentioned something — just for the listeners who aren’t familiar with it, you mentioned Lupron. Could you just briefly — just so the listener who’s like, “What’s Lupron?”

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Right. So Lupron is an injectable drug that puts a woman’s body into a temporary state of menopause by ceasing the production of female hormones so that you’re not getting a menstrual cycle each cycle. And the thought behind doing that is post-surgical — the surgeon has gone in and ablated all the scar tissue. And so if they put you into this temporary state of menopause for six months, then you are not allowing any growth of endometrial tissue to ensue — any new growth, I should say — because most endometrial tissue, it’s migratory, so it can migrate as high as the brain matter. In studies, researchers have found endometrial implants on brain matter and sinus tissue and lungs and small intestines and such. So those will continue to weep with the surge of hormone — it’s hormone sensitive tissue — but there’s no new cell growth that will ensue with using Lupron post-operatively. But then the problem lies with getting off of the Lupron at that six-month period post-operatively and praying that the period comes back. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t — sometimes it does with issues. So I don’t really — I’m not a real big proponent on using Lupron, rather using some sort of hormonal support or definitely dietary support.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, thank you for just explaining that. There was a part of me that thought, how different is that to the birth control pill? But that’s a topic for another day.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Well, I mean, just briefly — the birth control pill is medication and it’s synthetic hormones that are typically very elevated in some sort of estradiol component, whether it’s ethinyl estradiol or some other sort of synthetic estradiol, which causes an inflammatory process in the pelvis and belly of someone with endometriosis, more times than not exacerbating the symptoms. But this is very commonly prescribed medical protocol and it’s, in my opinion, not the best way to go about taking care of somebody with endometriosis.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, yeah. I mean, given that it doesn’t address any of the problems — it just kind of masks them. So tell us then — okay, so what I’ve gathered from what you said, which is truly fascinating, is that you developed Mercier Therapy after kind of trying everything that’s like known to women. And then when you even tried other kind of abdominal massage therapy modalities, you found that it wasn’t necessarily kind of going deep enough. And then you shared your experience with the cadavers, which is also fascinating, where you actually got to see specifically where these organs are located in the body and have a sense of what type of pressure you would have to apply to actually affect these organs. So tell us a little bit then about Mercier Therapy. What is it doing — because I mean, you mentioned some quite significant impacts that you had quite early on from it — but what exactly is it doing to those tissues? How is it helping?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Right. So anything that — and I’ve said this a thousand times, so I’m sorry if I’m repeating it to anyone listening — but truly anything that lives moves, and anything that’s living and isn’t moving is slowly losing its life. So in the case of really any sort of pelvic pathology, those organs go on lockdown. And so they’re not moving, and movement immobility equals non-optimal function. If I injured my shoulder, I wouldn’t be able to swing a tennis racket as efficiently or effectively as I could have without that injury there. I’d have to go to rehabilitation or therapy to get that shoulder rehabbed. Well, nobody’s really doing pelvic therapy rehab. I am, and the people that train with me are, but I wish women knew about this more, especially like after C-section. So back to your original question — increasing mobility and blood flow is what optimizes organ function, period. If it’s not moving, it’s not enhanced in its optimization as far as function is concerned. That’s it.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

All right. By going in and doing kind of more of a deep abdominal type therapy and really manipulating the organs, you’re encouraging blood flow and improving circulation. And I mean, regarding endometriosis in particular, it’s characteristic of having different lesions, as you mentioned, in different areas of the body. And maybe share with us — and also you mentioned C-sections. And so one of the topics that’s kind of come up whenever I talk about abdominal massage therapies and modalities is just the concept of adhesions and having, say for example, areas of the body sticking together that shouldn’t, and then not really having that freedom of motion. And one of the greatest examples — I did a podcast with Rachel Ayer years ago and she described what she called the dancing uterus, which was just a really lovely visual. Most of us don’t necessarily think about our uteri. And in her description, I mean, basically when you recognize that the uterus actually moves throughout your menstrual cycle and has to actually have that freedom of motion, then all of a sudden it makes so much sense how having this kind of physical modality could be helpful.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Right. I mean, just as in labor the uterus has to have the ability to move to deliver the baby, to contract, to get the baby out. It also has to have that movement just as you said during an orgasm, during ovulation, during menstruation. The uterus — I like to picture the uterus like a hot air balloon because it’s the same shape in essence, and all the ropes coming down off the side to hold the basket in place. All those ropes are ligaments in the pelvis holding the uterus anchored in the pelvis but allowing for movement. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term tensegrity — it was a term coined by architect Buckminster Fuller — and basically it’s a term of physics. So if one area is too contracted, another area is more lengthened, so there’s going to have to be a redistribution of tensions somewhere else in the structures and anchoring points. Just like the Golden Gate Bridge — if one of those big steel cables that were holding the bridge in place became loose, the whole bridge doesn’t fall down, but the tension does have to redistribute somewhere else. So that’s the same with the pelvic organs. You’ve got to get mobility in equally to the uterus, the ovaries, the bladder, and then all of the surrounding ligaments, especially the uterosacral ligament, which is the double prong ligament — comes out of the bottom of the posterior of the uterus and attaches at the base of the sacrum anteriorly.

So if there’s a positional issue within the ligaments holding the organs, it can actually turn your sacrum — it’s called counternutation — and put your sacrum into a position that wouldn’t be normal and natural. Then it throws off the sacroiliac joints and the whole pelvis. So when we work — and Mercier Therapy’s deep pelvic organ visceral manipulation — we’re literally deeply manipulating the organs and the ligaments to provide for more elasticity in the ligaments, to allow for the organs to move and breathe easier, if that makes sense.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

It does. I really like the analogy of the bridge because it really helped me to understand what you were saying in terms of — if you think about all of those ligaments kind of attaching, and similar to the balloon example, and if it kind of goes off balance it really gives you a sense of this could be painful, this could be problematic. If your uterus is supposed to have normal motion, having the kind of improper tension around those different ligaments — you can kind of get it. What I really like about abdominal therapy modalities is that it kind of takes us into our bodies and helps us to think about our physical bodies. Especially as women — we’re so disconnected from our bodies. We don’t really learn about it. You’re mentioning all the different ligaments and the names and the words. Imagine if that’s something that we were just generally taught in biology class. I mean, we were taught a lot of things — why not that? And if you’re kind of taught that, then you would have this sense of, okay, this is like a muscle, it’s an organ, these are ligaments attached to it, and then all of a sudden it makes so much sense that addressing it in a physical way — as you mentioned earlier, you said that we don’t really do pelvic physiotherapy — it makes so much more sense. Because that is going to do something way different than surgery to address pain. Maybe talk to us just about that concept of this type of modality versus the typical way that we address period pain and or fertility challenges.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Sure. Well, first of all, we have to get the body prepared for any sort of pregnancy, whether it be a natural conception or a medically assisted conception. I like to use examples so that people understand where I’m coming from and they’re not confused — I like to be very clear. And when I say preparing, I like to say, well, you don’t sign up for the 26-mile marathon and show up the day of the marathon not prepared. You have to be running to expand your lungs and your diaphragm, and you’ve got to get your body into this rhythm, and you’ve got to be eating the proper nutrition to prepare for the marathon. A pregnancy is like a marathon. So you’ve got to get the space prepared. And typically women with fertility challenges — I know that I was in this camp because I had this endometriosis and Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, so I had two kind of autoimmune diseases that were preventing me from conceiving. But going to the space and getting that ready before you try to conceive or while you’re trying to conceive is imperative. It’s imperative. And I think that the marathon example really drives the message home.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Yeah, because there’s so many things in life that we prepare for and somehow pregnancy and birth in particular are two things that we’re taught — because it’s natural — that it’s just gonna happen and it’s gonna happen perfectly and right away and you don’t have to think about it. Traditional cultures had a sense of preparing for birth, and so somehow the more the word gets out it’s like we have to kind of shift our mindset around it. So I really like that example of the marathon because you would never show up there just like, okay, let’s go. I wouldn’t — I’m not a runner, I did a 5K and I didn’t prepare — I’m being accountable here.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Well, sorry, just one thing to say to that — I think, which illustrates your example even further — if you did show up to the 26-mile marathon without preparing, you would hurt yourself. Yes, you would. You could hurt yourself forever. Right? You could walk away with an injury that would last you a lifetime. That’s why I think this is really important. And you know what? Back to your point about preparing for labor and birth — I’m also a midwife. We are doing that really amazingly now. There are so many great resources out there and women are becoming all too keen about what they really want and how they’re going to prepare for it. And bravo, ladies, that’s awesome. But not so much — not as much in the fertility world. I mean, they walk right into the RE office — the reproductive endocrinology and fertility doctor — and bless them because I’ve got great relationships with them and I love what they do and I support them. But they walk in — women walk into the RE office and they think, “Oh, thank God, they’re going to get me pregnant.” It’s like, whoa. That is the furthest thing from what’s going to happen. And these ladies and their husbands or partners — they just really don’t know the punch that’s going to wallop them financially, emotionally, physically.

It’s not that easy as someone’s just going to get you pregnant. And I also emphasize when someone comes to see me in consult for the Shared Journey Fertility Program to bring their partner. I never want to decouple the couple. I think it’s important we keep everybody together in this process so that they’re still making their baby, that nobody’s taking that away from them. But I also wanted to back up too — women that are trying to conceive and are having trouble doing so usually disconnect from their belly button to their pubic bone and don’t think about that space because they’ve either had a history of sexual trauma or surgery that caused them pain, a miscarriage, an abortion, something that has caused them pain. And they just disconnect. Well, when a Mercier therapist gets in there, you’ll feel that we have been there after even an evaluation, even more so after the first treatment. And that will directly bring your awareness back to the space, which is another just beautiful, tangible thing that you can walk away with from our work. And it’s true 100% of the time that no woman walks away from my hands on her belly and doesn’t feel it the next day. And they’re like, “Oh wow — that space does exist and I do feel a difference.” I might even feel a little taller because things have been released in there. I’m able to stand up straight or sit up straighter. It’s really just good work.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, I just love this conversation and really bringing it into the body because what you said is so profound. I feel like a lot of women listening would really be thinking about that — like, wow, how could abdominal therapy make me feel that way? But if you think about it — if you’ve ever had a really good massage, it’s the same thing. Because we’re talking about muscles, we’re talking about bodily organs, we’re talking about our physical tissues. And I feel like that’s what kind of grounds this discussion that we’re having. Because it makes so much sense when you think about it that way — you can have a really great massage and release tension and have an emotional response because you were holding some emotion in a certain part of your body. And in that particular region that you described, there’s a lot of emotions that we hold there. And it goes so far beyond just on the individual level, because collectively as a culture we actively dismiss this region of our bodies. And there couldn’t be a more clear example than we don’t even learn about it — we don’t even know about it. And so one of the questions that I thought of as you were describing it is — could you take us through a little bit about the therapy itself and paint us a picture? And I’m sure women listening are wondering, does it hurt? How does it feel?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Great question. Yeah, that’s a great question. So we start with a consult, and you come in. I get your medical history, your gynecological history, obstetric history if you have one. And then I get you on the table and I feel around for organ position and restriction. And then I give you that information and I let you know how I would go about trying to help — I don’t want to say “fix,” I don’t like the word “fix” — trying to reposition things to a more optimal place. And then it’s six hours of treatment. It’s one hour a week for six weeks. Or if somebody’s getting ready to start an IVF stim protocol and time is of the essence, usually I’ll ask them to just wait one cycle, but if they must start a cycle for insurance reasons or their age is necessitating that they do so, that’s completely up to them. But we can wrap up the treatment in four days. I have women flying in from all over the world to do treatment with me. And we can wrap it up in four days — it’s 90 minutes each day, back to back. And then they leave me with a customized supplement regime for them specifically. But the treatment is all the same for each woman.

Now, is it painful? Great question. It can be painful for women that have active pathology like endometriosis present or cystic ovaries, as in the case of polycystic ovarian syndrome. But I typically tend to not back off from that because it’s something that they need — the movement. And as we work and we get working, I can go deeper and deeper and deeper. I don’t inflict pain, but if there is some painful process along the way, I just keep moving forward through it as they allow. But it just works out great. And usually the women that are coming in from out of town will say that day two is the most tender — we are still able to work through that day effectively and get that done. By the third and fourth day, they seem to be okay and tolerating it fine.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

While you’re doing — because I’m picturing this — I would imagine you’re working with women who have likely tried a lot of different things. And I would imagine that if you do your assessment and you can right off the bat identify anything that’s out of alignment, a huge kind of relief that these women would feel — like, “Oh my goodness, there’s something here.” And even if it’s a bit painful, I would imagine they would really feel like, “Finally, someone’s doing something.”

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

You know, it’s so true. That is so true. I just had a couple drive in during the blizzard here in Chicago — the weekend after Thanksgiving — and they’re so dear and sweet. But they drove in from New Jersey and they had already had many children — they’re Orthodox Jewish and they wanted to continue to have more children in their family. And so we worked and worked and worked. She had had a prior full-term stillborn due to a placental abruption in labor, and then proceeded to have another child who was born at home, breech, and then she had another pregnancy that ended at 11 weeks. And they still wanted to try more. And so they came in and I worked on her the first day she was here and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, I feel taller. And oh my gosh, this just feels so good. It’s so sore but it feels so good. Like I needed to have that work done. Like it just was calling to me. We had to drive here and do it.” They drove here. And so they’re so committed to their marriage and they’re building their family. And I just loved working with them and hearing her tangible differences. It was really nice. I love to hear what women have to say. I don’t want them to walk in here and say “I’m fine.” I want to know the details of what you’re feeling after I touch you, and please don’t spare any of them. It’s so important that I know.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Thank you for giving us that example. You can tell that there’s just something that’s really resonating with me about it. And I keep saying it — really bringing women back into their bodies in a very physical way is so powerful. Okay, so there are implications with respect to fertility. From your experience and practice, fertility challenges are extremely complex. So I’d be interested to hear from your perspective — what are some of the most common causes of fertility challenges? And what are some of the most common situations that Mercier Therapy can assist with?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Okay, sure. So let me back up briefly to my undergrad years. I worked for the Center for Human Reproduction as a clinician. They knew that I was preparing to go to med school and do a residency in OB/GYN and a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology. And so they really taught me a lot and gave me some big responsibility in my young years. I was 19 to 21 when I worked for the fertility clinic — I was doing IUIs and semen analysis and sperm wash and blood work and ultrasounds and assisting in retrieval, embryo transfer, HSGs, monitoring all of those cycles. So I remember all too well how things went down in those days. And not much has changed except for the medications.

So from my perspective, the most common fertility issues that I’m still seeing today — chief among them are endometriosis, tubal blockages, polycystic ovarian syndrome — which was not so big back in 1993 — but complications from secondary scar tissue, secondary fertility challenges from primary C-sections, women that have had sexual trauma that are holding a lot of emotional tension in their bellies. And there are a lot of endocrine issues like type 1 diabetes, Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis — those are some pretty bold issues. And so with that, I work respectively with a group of reproductive endocrinologists called BIOS here in Chicago, and we work really well together. They can handle the medical aspect, and I can handle the more integrative aspect. And then the patient — the gal that we’re working with — gets the best of both worlds, which is so exciting. She’s cared for by two groups of professionals that are completely working well in the sandbox together. We can’t be against each other here — we’ve got to work together because there are so many women that need our help. And I think that when a woman comes to see me and she’s failed IVF, and I can talk the talk about the drugs in the cycle — there’s something very comforting that they know what I’m talking about.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, it gives us a picture of all of the different challenges. So then — in your perspective, if you could wave your magic wand, do you feel that every woman who’s experiencing fertility challenges should have an assessment like the one you do?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

I do.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

I thought you would say that. Could you expand on that? Because for me — I just have a very active imagination — what if every woman was just routinely provided with this? Because in many ways it’s super niche and all of that, but in other ways this is kind of like the basic standard of care that all women should have — an assessment regarding uterine alignment.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

That’s exactly it. So there’s another school or training program out there that says that the uterus is not positioned normally. I never say that. I say, well, this is your normal position — it’s just restricted in movement. And so I think when women find that out, they’re like, “What — how can my uterus not be moving?” I’m like, well, you did tell me you were a gymnast and you fell flat on your backside on the hard gym floor — so that can cause a displacement and restricted movement.

So I think that yes — and I’m not tooting my own horn — but I am one of my own patients. I ended up conceiving seven times. I did lose five pregnancies. But I did have a daughter and a son — my daughter was born when I was 37, my son was born when I was 40. And stage four endometriosis, three surgical procedures in my past, and severe Hashimoto’s thyroid disease. But I had my work done on me each time. And had I not had my work, had I just been a consumer, had I not known any of this, I probably would have done Clomid, I probably would have failed Clomid, I probably would have moved on to something bigger and bolder. Women just don’t know. And so at least if they have the knowledge in their toolbox to be able to make a good choice for themselves — yeah, I think they all need to visit one of us. And this isn’t about money for me. This is about educating women. And to that end, I made a documentary film — it’s an educational piece. It’s never made a penny. I don’t care if it makes a penny. As long as the information is out there, women need to know that there’s another choice available — and there it is. Make a good choice for yourself.

Just as you wouldn’t walk onto a car lot and allow the car salesman to say, “This car is best for you — this is what you’re going to do — come sign the papers.” No — research it. Maybe there’s another car dealership that feels better to you. Maybe there’s another kind of car. Maybe there’s a more affordable one. We plan more for our wedding than we do to have a child. And I want Mercier Therapy to be part of the standard of care. It is so gentle and it is so effective. And it’s my passion to serve women. I just love, love, love it. And it seems that everyone who comes to take my training classes are just meant to be there. Every single one of them are just meant to be there. They share my heart for serving women. And usually they have their own story and it’s nice that they can interweave their own story into their work. And it’s just been a beautiful thing.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, and what’s interesting — it’s so different even from our dominant paradigm of medicine. It’s very different because it’s coming from — even how you choose your words when you’re describing the placement of the uterus and things like that — you’re coming from a place of: okay, your body can do this. There’s just been a few things or situations that have kind of knocked your uterus out of alignment. We’re really working with your body to bring it back because we believe that your body can do this, and it just needs some physical support. And you know, it’s a very different philosophy and paradigm — to come from a place of, “I believe that your body can do this, but your body just needs a bit of support.” So you’re really helping the body to do what it was meant to do, essentially.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Yeah. Yes.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, and so in a couple of particular cases — I mean, I want to get a sense from you because I know Mercier Therapy boasts some high effectiveness rates. So that’s one of the things that I have noticed. And I remember in the interview that I did with Marie Whitman, I remember she said something about 80-something percent effectiveness, and I remember thinking, can we qualify this a little bit? Because you have to be careful and cautious about how you talk about things. So I want to get a sense of what your experience has been in the 17 years since you first developed the method. And I also want to touch on — for instance, blocked tubes is something that you mentioned, because often if a woman’s tubes are blocked, that’s it — that’s the ticket to IVF. So I just want to kind of get a sense of some of these different conditions as well.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Okay, sure. So let me talk about the study that I did. And it was published in the Midwifery Today Journal in 2013. It was a control group of 44 women, and across the board, they were ages 28 to 44. And so I took these women’s cases and I just averaged things out. So these were women with varying pathologies, various surgical histories, women that had done IVF, some had used Clomid, and the majority of them conceived naturally. And so when you average all of it out — all of these women had undergone Mercier Therapy — 83% of them ended up walking away having a live birth and a healthy baby. So yeah, it’s a big number, but that’s what it was.

And now Midwifery Today is publishing a new study for me — it’s called Mercier Therapy and IVF. IVF, according to the newest SART Preliminary Data from 2016, for a primary IVF cycle, it was about on average 23% across the board pregnancy rate — and that’s not the take-home baby rate. We took that number and then we took the number we got. So the women that did Mercier Therapy — six sessions coupled with an organic prenatal vitamin, a food-based prenatal vitamin with methylated folate — 50% of women that had a first IVF cycle got pregnant. So it raised the statistic for primary IVF cycle by 30%, which is huge. That study is being published this month in the Midwifery Today Journal domestically and internationally next month, January. So we’re very excited about that. There were 188 women in that study. It’ll all be up on my website soon — you can reference it and check it out.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, yes — we’ll stay in touch so I can get the links from you, and when this episode airs we’ll make sure to post those in the show notes page. I mean, this is all just so interesting to me. Being a woman in this field, where you’re supporting women — there feels like there’s a lot of things that are not standard of care that really should be. And this to me seems like one, and it doesn’t seem like such a stretch because we already have quite a tradition of physical therapy in so many different aspects of health, particularly as it relates to athletes. And as you mentioned in one of your examples — like hurting your arm and needing physical therapy to kind of get it back in place — we all have this understanding that our bodies sometimes need work. And so to me it doesn’t seem like a stretch to bring that into the pelvic area, especially for women who are facing these challenges, given also the results of the studies that you have conducted with your patients.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Thank you. And keep in mind too, when you’re reading my two studies — my two little tiny baby studies that I funded myself — I’m not funded by Big Pharma or any big academic institution. I do have a PhD, so I can conduct a pretty nice study. But it’s just, you know, getting the numbers out there and at least showing and proving my work — that has made a huge difference for all of us practicing Mercier Therapy. There’s a gal, her name is Kristen Eyman — she’s a DC out in New Jersey. She took training with me and she just posted that she had one more Mercier Therapy person she worked with and they’re pregnant. I’m like, well, your rates are 100%! That’s awesome.

So it’s great. And we have a private Facebook practitioner group where we’ll share cases. I’ve got reproductive endocrinology docs in the group as well. Dr. Christiane Northrup is in the group. So there are a lot of great people. We’ve got some great perspective from a very broad group of professional women, which is awesome.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, as we bring our interview to a close today — we’ve covered a lot of ground. But for the woman who’s listening, who’s really intrigued by this and just kind of maybe has never even heard about abdominal massage therapies or anything like that — what is something that you want her to take away from our interview today?

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Yeah, I would encourage them to try something new and maybe think a little bit outside of the box as far as something they may want to try. Just come to a consult. We’ll sit and talk about everything, we’ll do an evaluation — it’ll be something like you’ve probably never experienced before, but I encourage you to at least give it a try and to trust that your body’s not broken.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

I couldn’t think of better words to end on. Well, Dr. Mercier, I could have picked your brain for the rest of the day. I really, really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your expertise and your experiences and your client experiences. And so for the listeners who want to learn more about what you do — maybe they live in Chicago and they want to learn more — tell us where they can go. And also I believe you have a book and you also mentioned the movie, so maybe you could just share all of your resources.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Sure. So I wrote a book that I let go out of print because my next one will be way better. That book is no longer available. It was called Optimal Pelvic Wellness. I did make a film — it’s called Fertility: The Shared Journey with Mercier Therapy. If you go to my practice website, expectamiracle.life, you can find a link for the film and just click on it. You’ll be able to rent it on Amazon — it’s like $2.99. And then any information that you need is on the expectamiracle.life website. And if you’re a professional looking to train in Mercier Therapy, you can go to merciertherapy.com.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Okay, perfect. Well, thank you again for being here — this was a really great interview.

Dr. Jennifer Mercier:

Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/423.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Dr. Jennifer Mercier. I found this episode to be so helpful and I’ve referred a number of clients to this episode, especially when it first aired. And ultimately I think that we just need to continue the conversation around pelvic pain, endometriosis, and period pain. I am like a broken record over here, always wanting to share that concept of using the menstrual cycle as a vital sign so that we can start to understand our symptoms within a context. So instead of being told that it’s just normal to be in pain, or to have your pain minimized, to have a medical practitioner tell you that it couldn’t possibly hurt that bad — it’s insane that that is a thing that happens, but it obviously does. It’s really important to keep that conversation open and to talk about the different ways we can attempt to treat these conditions, reduce the severity, improve fertility, reduce adhesions, and where we bring in that complementary approach — where we look at the modality of functional medicine, looking at the root of inflammation, trying to minimize that through the means that we have available to us, as well as other modalities that may be helpful, such as the abdominal therapy modalities, and of course Western medicine options.

I feel like we get the best care when we look at that boardroom analogy scenario that I always talk about — that I wrote about in The Fifth Vital Sign — which is essentially that you, as the woman, as the patient, are sitting at the head of the table. And if you have a serious condition like endometriosis or severe pelvic pain, it is helpful at times to have more than one practitioner in your corner. So that might involve a medical doctor, a fertility specialist, a Mercier therapist, a nutritionist, and a fertility awareness educator to support you through charting. And so it’s really up to you to assemble your team. But when it comes down to making those decisions of how to move forward, you can hear each person’s perspective that’s being informed by their education, training, and experience. But you as the head of the table are in charge of your own health. And so it’s always up to you to decide what is going to be best for you. And so ultimately, the best practitioners trust their client to really make those decisions for what’s best for them, while providing them with knowledge and information that is useful to help them make the best decision for themselves.

So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful weekend whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time — be well and happy charting.