Most people hear the phrase “unexplained infertility” and feel the bottom drop out of their stomach.
You walk into appointments hopeful.
You walk out with perfect blood results, a clear scan, and a doctor saying:
“Everything looks fine – keep trying.”
But something in your body, intuition, or spirit whispers:
“But something isn’t fine.”
Unexplained infertility is a diagnosis that sounds benign – almost reassuring -but it lands heavy. It sits on the chest. It keeps you Googling at 2am. It makes you feel invisible, dismissed, or worse, imagining things.
Here’s what I want you to write down on a post it note and stick it so you can remember darling!
Unexplained infertility is not a dead end.
It simply means the explanation wasn’t found – yet.
In natural fertility work, that unexplained space is often where we finally start to see the actual story. The real causes. The patterns medicine didn’t pick up. The nuances of your cycle, your health, your history, and your nervous system that don’t show up on a lab sheet.
Let’s dive deeper into the five most common root causes I see behind unexplained infertility – the ones that aren’t always tested, measured, or even talked about.
1. Ovulation Is Happening – But Not Optimally
Ovulation is not a binary “yes/no” event.
It is a hormonal orchestration.
Yet conventional testing often only checks whether you ovulated. Not:
How strong ovulation was
How balanced your estrogen-to-progesterone shift is
Whether the egg released was mature
Whether your luteal phase is long enough for implantation
You can have:
A positive OPK
Regular periods
Normal bloodwork
…and still have:
Weak ovulation
Short luteal phases
Insufficient progesterone
Delayed ovulation
Or a follicle that didn’t quite reach maturity
These subtleties matter – deeply.
Implantation depends on hormonal balance, not just timing.
This is often the first place natural fertility support brings clarity.
2. Sperm Health Issues That Don’t Show Up on Standard Tests
A semen analysis looks thorough – but it’s not.
Most tests measure:
Count
Motility
Morphology
But they don’t measure:
DNA fragmentation
Oxidative stress
Sperm vitality under stress
Environmental toxin exposure
Micronutrient deficiencies
Inflammation
Varicocele impact beyond count
And many partners of women with unexplained infertility have what I call “functional sperm issues” – not severe enough to be flagged, but impactful enough to reduce conception odds month after month.
It takes one sperm to fertilize an egg, but millions of healthy, robust, resilient sperm to make that possible.
Natural interventions can significantly improve sperm DNA quality – but only if we actually look for it.
3. Chronic Inflammation or Immune Imbalance
This is one of the quietest and most overlooked contributors.
Inflammation can affect:
Egg quality
Sperm quality
Ovulation
Implantation
Hormone signaling
And inflammation can be driven by:
Undiagnosed endometriosis
Gut health issues
Food intolerances
Autoimmune activity
Stress hormones
Environmental toxins
Past trauma (yes, truly – the nervous system and immune system are intertwined)
Many women have “inflammation bodies” – a history of pain, bloating, fatigue, skin issues, IBS, migraines – that never gets connected to fertility because they aren’t “ill”. They can be just low-level imbalances you’ve got so used to functioning with.
But fertility is a precision system, and inflammation is static in the signal.
When we lower the inflammatory load, things often shift – quickly. So quickly my friend.
4. Subclinical Hormone Issues That Don’t Show Up on Blood Tests
You can have normal blood ranges and still have:
Poor egg quality
Progesterone that drops too soon
Thyroid symptoms without abnormal TSH
Insulin resistance that isn’t yet “diabetic”
Androgens that fluctuate month to month
Subclinical hypothalamic dysfunction
Nervous system dysregulation that alters hormones
The problem is that most hormone tests are:
Taken once
On a random day
Without tracking patterns
Using broad reference ranges
And without considering symptoms or lived experience.
It’s simply not enough data to be completely useful!
In natural fertility practice, we look at your cycle as data, not a mystery.
We track patterns. We follow monthly shifts. We watch for subtle changes in temperature, mucus, mood, cravings, sleep, libido.
Your body is communicating.
It just hasn’t been listened to.
5. Unprocessed Stress, Trauma, or Emotional Blocks
This isn’t “it’s all in your head.”
This is physiology. (And where my unique approach to natural fertility – somatic fertility came from)
The nervous system influences:
Ovulation
Progesterone
Cortisol
Blood sugar
Implantation
Uterine blood flow
Inflammation
Immune system response
When a woman is in chronic fight-or-flight – whether from:
Past trauma
Burnout
Pressure to conceive
Family patterns
Perfectionism
Overthinking
Or old emotional wounds
– her body can feel unsafe opening into conception.
And conception is, at its core, an act of energetic openness.
When we get the nervous system into a state of safety – not perfection, just safety – cycles regulate, hormones shift, and the body softens into possibility.
This is often the missing piece.
So what does this mean for you?
If you’ve been told everything is “normal,” but your heart knows something isn’t – you’re right to trust your intuition.
Unexplained infertility is not the absence of causes.
It’s the absence of investigation.
And that’s where natural fertility support shines – we don’t guess, and we don’t ignore symptoms that don’t fit a tidy chart.
We look at:
Your story
Your cycle
Your health history
Your stress history
Your environment
Your patterns
Your energy
Your relationships
Your intuitive knowing
Because fertility is never just biological.
It’s emotional, energetic, relational, environmental, ancestral, and deeply personal.
You deserve an approach that sees and supports all of you.
Ready to find out more-
I support couples facing fertility challenges throughout Exeter, Devon and the Southwest, UK. You can also work with me online now! Why not get in contact with me today to find out how I can support you on your journey to becoming a Parent.
