Dr. Laurie Terzo, Natural Fertility Specialist

Dr. Laurie Terzo, Natural Fertility Specialist Empowering women and couples for over 25 years to naturally optimize their fertility and take control of their journey.

06/12/2026

If your file says “unexplained infertility,” read this twice: that word describes the limits of the workup you got. Not the limits of your body.

The standard fertility workup answers three questions. Are the tubes open. Is she ovulating. Is his count in range. Presence, not performance. It confirms the parts exist, and then it stops.

It does not ask how your thyroid is converting hormone into the active form your ovaries can use. It does not ask whether your iron stores can fund the 90 days of energy-hungry work it takes to mature one egg. It does not ask what your blood sugar and insulin are whispering to your ovaries every day, or how his s***m are built beyond a count on one page.

“Unexplained” is where the looking stopped. There is almost always more to look at.

If you want to know what looking deeper would mean for you specifically, the free Fertility Audit Call is in my bio. No labs to send, no prep, a real conversation.

06/04/2026

A “normal” 28-day cycle can still hide a real problem.

Early thirties. Regular cycles. Years of trying. Not one doctor flagged a thing.

She tracked her temps. Ovulation to period? Just 9 days. That’s her luteal phase, and under ~12 days is often too short for an embryo to implant.

The calendar looked perfect because the first half of her cycle hid it.

This is why cycle length isn’t enough. Where ovulation falls inside it matters.

Short luteal phase = real causes, and it’s workable. But first, someone has to look.

06/03/2026

I had a session with one of the women who is pregnant right now inside of my practice. She said, “Thank you for listening. Thank you for not brushing me off.”

I hear it constantly. And every time, it tells me how low the bar has gotten.

Before she came to me, she’d been told everything looked normal. But there were losses. There were pieces of her picture that no one had slowed down to look at. Normal labs are not the same as a thorough workup. “You’re fine” is not the same as someone actually investigating why.

She didn’t need to be reassured. She needed to be looked at properly, with the right map and the right workup, through a fertility lens.

If you’ve been told everything is normal and your body is telling you otherwise, that feeling is information. You’re allowed to ask for more.

Follow along if you want fertility care that looks deeper.

05/28/2026

“Your progesterone is normal.” Cool. But is it optimal for fertility?

The conventional lab range starts at 5 - because >5 just confirms you ovulated. That’s it. That’s the whole bar.

But ovulation confirmed ≠ luteal phase doing its job. ≠ enough to support implantation. ≠ enough to hold a pregnancy.

For my TTC clients, I want mid-luteal progesterone solidly above 15. Closer to 20 is better. Paired with a 12+ day luteal phase, stable BBTs, and no premenstrual spotting.

Normal isn’t the goal. Fertile is.

05/27/2026

The high androgens behind your PMOS (formerly PCOS) have a source. And most fertility care never tests for it.

The acne. The hair growth. The missed cycles. The hair loss. These symptoms can come from two different places.

→ Ovarian androgens are driven by insulin. When insulin is high, your ovaries make more testosterone. Most common in insulin-resistant PMOS.

→ Adrenal androgens (mainly DHEA-S) are driven by stress and HPA axis dysfunction. Most common in Adrenal PMOS, the stress-driven type.

Same symptoms. Different drivers. Different testing. Different treatment.

Treating ovarian-driven androgens with adrenal protocols, or the reverse, is why a protocol built for one type won’t work for the other.

05/27/2026

A live evening inside my practice. Wednesday, June 3.

🗓 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET • Live on Zoom

I am taking you inside the Fabulous Fertility Care Container. The under-investigated patterns most clinics miss. How we build care around your specific body, not a protocol. Real patient stories from women who once felt stuck and now feel held.

For women 35 and over (and the partners walking it with them). Under 35 and want the same depth of care? You are welcome too.
Live and unedited. Replay on request.

👉 Save your seat: Link in comments

- Dr. Laurie

05/25/2026

25 years as a natural fertility doctor. Here is what I know for sure.

1. “Unexplained” rarely means unexplainable. It means no one has looked deep enough yet.

2. Your period is not an inconvenience. It is a monthly report on your hormones.
3. A “normal” lab result and an optimal one are not the same thing.
4. Egg quality is not fixed. The next 90 days are always yours.
5. It is never only her. S***m is half of every embryo.
6. More supplements is not better. The right ones for your body is better.
7. Protein at breakfast does more than most of what sits in the medicine cabinet.
8. Your nervous system is not separate from your fertility. It is part of the picture.
9. You are not a statistic. An average describes a crowd, never you.

Hope is not naive. After 25 years, I have watched it be earned. You are not out of options.

Save this, and send it to someone in the thick of it.

05/17/2026

PMOS, what we just stopped calling PCOS, isn’t one diagnosis. It’s 4 phenotypes, and each one weights the 5 PMOS systems differently:

→ Insulin-resistant PMOS: glucose, inositol, dietary shifts → Adrenal PMOS: nervous system, HPA axis support → Post-pill PMOS: often temporary HPO recovery → Inflammatory PMOS: inflammation, gut, toxic load

If your protocol isn’t moving the needle, it may be the right protocol for someone else.

P.S. The high androgens behind PMOS symptoms come from two different sources, ovarian or adrenal. That’s the next reel.

05/15/2026

As of a couple days ago, PCOS officially has a new name.

It’s now PMOS, Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome.

Why? Because the old name was wrong.

Most women diagnosed with PCOS don’t actually have ovarian cysts. And it was never just a gynecological condition.

After 25 years in this work, the new name confirms what functional fertility providers have been saying for over a decade.

PMOS is multisystem. 5 connected systems drive it: → Metabolic (glucose, insulin, mitochondria) → Endocrine (androgens, thyroid, HPA-HPO axis) → Inflammatory (gut, autoimmunity, environmental load) → Nervous system (stress, sleep, sympathetic dominance) → Reproductive (cycle, ovulation, egg quality)

The acne, the missed cycles, the weight, the mood, all of it is downstream of those five.

That’s why one-size-fits-all metformin doesn’t support the full picture for most women. Your care needs to match your whole body.

05/13/2026

There’s a single fertility test most clinics don’t run. The research on it has gotten loud enough that finally more fertility practitioners are talking about it.

The vaginal microbiome. Not just yeast or BV. The full bacterial signature of your reproductive tract.

Lactobacillus-dominant communities support implantation, lower miscarriage risk, and improve IUI/IVF outcomes. Dysbiotic communities raise loss risk and reduce success. Standard workups don’t check this. Most REs don’t either.

If you’ve had unexplained loss, failed implantation, recurrent IUI/IVF that didn’t take, or chronic BV that comes back, this is on the list.

The vaginal microbiome test I recommend is the test. I’ll also be giving away a free Evvy kit to one of my 5 Day Fertility Optimization Reset workshop participants (begins 5/18, link in my profile). 🥳

Address

Portland, OR

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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