3 Easy Ways to Boost Your Fertility
Did you know one in six couples worldwide experience infertility?
If you’re like me, you probably feel like it’s many more! I feel like everywhere I turn, a friend or a stranger is dealing with or has dealt with infertility.
If you have dealt with it, you have probably gotten to a place where you feel scared or hopeless.
Now, there are a lot of reasons people experience infertility. And actually, males contribute to 15% of that one in six stat above. There can be irreversible or reversible structural issues that affect fertility, but there is a large number of couples experiencing unexplained infertility or reversible infertility!
Fertility science, thankfully, has come a long way. Procedures like IVF and IUI have made it possible for infertile couples to have their babies! How amazing?
Unfortunately, these procedures are quite pricey, they involve multiple injections and medications (which some women do not want to put themselves through for a couple different reasons), AND they have not-the-best success rates (especially as women get older).
I know thus far, this blog post has been somewhat negative and may leave you thinking there’s not a lot of hope for you if you’re struggling with infertility.
But I am actually here to give you the GOOD NEWS!
There may be a way (or ways, actually) that you can boost your fertility to avoid procedures like IUI or IVF, or increase your odds that your next round of IVF will work.
I am sharing the first three things that I have my clients do to help boost their fertility. These three things are easy because they can be done quickly and for a fraction of the cost of your medical bills. And best of all - these three things are EFFECTIVE, which is why I can’t keep them to myself!
Eating for Fertility
If you have thought at all about your fertility, I am going to go ahead and take a guess that I could find “what to eat for fertility” in your google search history.
Am I right?
What you probably read during that search is that you should eat a “well balanced diet” to improve your fertility. But what does that mean?
Here is the thing… It’s really hard to know what the perfect “balanced” diet is for everyone because every body is different and has it’s own nutrient needs. Unfortunately, google cannot tell you what your individual body needs.
What can help you is functional testing (micronutrient testing, mineral and metal testing, organic acids test, etc.).
While I believe preparation for conception is best (i.e., completing these tests and eating and supplementing for your body PRIOR to trying to conceive), that is not in the cards for everyone, whether that be for financial purposes, lack of information, or some other barrier.
So, it makes sense that we want to identify one specific diet that is going to help everyone improve their fertility so that it’s easy peasy to conceive.
Research has shown that the Mediterranean diet has very good effects on fertility. This diet is high in protein, high in antioxidants, and incorporates plenty of “good fats” (like avocado, olive oil, olives, etc.).
A problem some people see with the Mediterranean diet is that they hear “prioritize good fats” and then they eat WAYYY too much fat. Fat is good for you. But fats are extremely calorie dense and so a little goes a long way. Having 2 Tbsp of healthy fat per meal is a good general rule of thumb.
Protein is very important when trying to conceive, but so is choosing good quality protein. If you like eating animal protein, I would always make sure that the animal is raised in good conditions, and the meat is finished well. For instance, grass fed and finished beef is going to provide much better nutrients for you than will grain-fed beef that is also highly processed.
A good focus while eating for fertility is to decrease inflammation and oxidative stress. That’s what eating good quality meat and the Mediterranean diet can do for you. Also foods high in antioxidants will help to decrease oxidative stress. Foods like berries, sweet potatoes, greens, etc.
The number one cause in most people’s diet of inflammation is sugar. So, definitely avoiding sugar and keeping your blood sugar levels in check is important for fertility.
Hopefully this gives you some good places to start when it comes to eating for fertility. Remember, testing and not guessing is the number one way to ensure you are eating exactly what your body needs, but if that’s not in the cards for you, start with these helpful tips.
3 Days to Boost Fertility: Why switching your personal care products can help
Talk of cleaner personal care, house cleaning, and cooking products is very trendy right now. But that is for good reason.
You might be thinking that you don’t care that much about switching to cleaner ingredients, because what you’ve always used has worked well for you thus far. Or you’re thinking it’s on the shelf in the store, it must be safe. Hear me out…
The FDA (the entity that is responsible for regulating what goes into our personal care products) only bans around 33 harmful ingredients from going into personal care products like soaps, makeup, hair care products, etc.
This number is really low, as there are so many more ingredients that are harmful to our health, and especially to our fertility.
Places like the Europe have actually ended up banning something like 1400 ingredients that have proven to be harmful to our health.
That means that in the U.S., even your tried and trusted products that you buy off the shelf likely have some sort of harmful ingredients in them. Let’s look at some of the ingredients commonly found in things we use everyday:
Phthalates: these are often found in soaps, shampoos, and hair sprays. When it comes to fertility, they disrupt follicle growth which can deplete ovarian reserves quickly and cause infertility.
Triclosan: commonly found in cosmetics, toothpaste, and body soap. Triclosan actually increases levels of estrogen in the body. If you know anything about fertility, you know that it requires a delicate balance of hormones. So, as you can probably tell, having excess estrogen while trying to conceive is not helpful - especially for men.
Parabens: these are usually found in makeup, moisturizers, hair care products, and shaving creams. Similarly to Triclosan, Parabens affect hormones. They interact with the receptors that hormones need to bind to to have effect in the body.
Oxybenzone: found in nail polishes, perfumes, and sunscreens. Oxybenzone can mimic estrogen and also interfere with testosterone production. This can affect female fertility for obvious reasons, but can also affect sperm function.
Hopefully, looking into these four ingredients is enough information to make you start thinking about making the switch to cleaner. But if this information has you totally freaked out and feeling like fertility is a lost cause because you have been using these ingredients your whole life, I have some good news for you…
Switching to clean products can decrease your levels of these four harmful chemicals in just three days. It logically follows that if you’re decreasing these harmful chemicals in your body, that your hormones and ovaries and fertility can start recovering!
A study done at UC Berkeley showed that teen girls who switch to clean products saw decreased levels of Phthalates (28% decrease), Parabens (44% decrease), Oxybenzone (35% decrease), and Triclosan (36% decrease) in their urine after just three days.
Phew!! That tells me that it’s not too late to switch and improve your fertility in just three days. Even if you have never considered the ingredients that are going into and on your body.
Supplementing for Fertility
This is the NUMBER ONE question I get when I start talking to someone about fertility - “What supplements should I be taking to boost my chances of having a baby?”
And I hope I am not starting to sound like a broken record here, but there isn’t one supplement or a handful of supplements that is going to help every single person to conceive easily because every body has it’s own nutrient needs!
First, let’s talk about what supplementation is. I feel it’s pretty common to hear that supplementation is replacing the nutrients that you are not getting from food. This is correct, but I really like to think of supplementation as replacing the nutrients that your body doesn’t have.
You can actually be eating or receiving some of the nutrients from food, but your body doesn’t process them or hold onto them and so you might still need to supplement for those nutrients.
This is where functional testing comes in again. We can see what nutrients your body is lacking, whether that be from being unable to process the nutrient or maybe you’re just not getting enough in your diet. Then we can fill the gaps with diet OR supplementation.
Let me be clear here - food is the best source of nutrients. If you can, you should add a food to get the nutrient you are lacking. But sometimes that’s either not possible or you physically can’t eat enough of that food to get the amount of nutrient that a supplement can give you.
If functional testing is not possible for you, another thing that is helpful is to look at your diet and lifestyle to see where gaps are likely happening.
For instance, if you work 12 hours a day inside of a building and rarely see the sun, it’s likely that you are lacking vitamin D and that supplementation is likely a good answer for you. In addition, appropriate levels of vitamin D are extremely needed for fertility.
Another example is zinc for male fertility. If your man has low testosterone or suboptimal sperm, zinc is likely a good option for him.
If you have PCOS and know you have blood sugar dysregulation, inositol has proven, in some studies, more effective than a pharmacological drug that is commonly used for this problem that also causes a ton of stomach distress, so inositol is definitely a more preferable option.
There are so many examples and instances that I could go through here, but this blog would get way too long to keep your attention, so I will stop there and put the link to look into great supplementation for you at the bottom of this blog.
Okay, recap…
Every body is made differently. Unfortunately, there is not one magic thing to do to automatically make you have optimal fertility.
But getting these three things down (diet, low-tox personal care, and supplementation) gives you an extremely good jumping off point.
Heck, implementing these three things without going any further might just have you as fertile as a bunny in no time! Sometimes all our bodies need is just a little effort into making it run smoothly (and unfortunately sometimes it needs a lot more than a little effort - I was there, you’re not alone!).
If after reading this, you are craving more…
Maybe a personalized diet, exercise, supplementation and lifestyle plan with accountability along the way to improve your fertility - GREAT! Schedule a free call with me
Maybe you want to suss out what supplements are going to work for your specific body’s needs - we can do that too! EMAIL ME HERE
Research mentioned: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22748101/ ; https://cerch.berkeley.edu/research-programs/hermosa-studyfollow me on instagraminquire about functional testingshop clean personal caresubscribe to VBA’s monthly wellness prep newsletter ⤵️