Each year, about 6 million women in America are faced with infertility, says Harvard researcher and physician Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro. And recent research reveals a significant association between diet and fertility. In fact, the newest findings from the Nurses' Health Study II, one of the longest-running investigations into women's health in America, found that diet, exercise and lifestyle changes help boost fertility.
With this research in mind, we asked fertility experts how diet can improve chances of becoming pregnant.
•What is the success rate of using diet to get pregnant?
The Nurses' Health Study showed that women not following a healthy diet were six times more likely to experience infertility related to ovulation than those who did.
In addition, Chavarro says, "Following healthier dietary and lifestyle habits was also related to decreased odds of experiencing infertility due to other causes, such as endometriosis, although not as strongly as for ovulatory disorder infertility.”
There are many factors affecting fertility. "Diet influences some of these, particularly egg and sperm health and ovulation, but there are many other factors at work such as prior injury or infection, age and its strong influence on egg number and quality, and anatomic abnormalities of the uterus and fallopian tubes — problems that cannot be addressed with diet,” says Philip E. Chenette, M.D., a fertility expert in San Francisco.
•What foods and behaviors should we try?
In his book "The Fertility Diet” (McGraw-Hill, 2007), Chavarro recommends:
•Avoid trans fats.
•Use more unsaturated vegetable oils, such as olive oil, and cut back on saturated fat from red meat and other sources.
•Eat more vegetable protein such as beans and nuts, and less animal protein.
•Choose whole grains and other unrefined carbohydrates rather than highly refined carbohydrates.
•Drink a glass of whole milk or eat a dish of full-fat yogurt every day.
•Take a multivitamin with folic acid and other B vitamins.
•Get plenty of iron from fruits, vegetables, beans and supplements (not from red meat).
•Drink coffee, tea and alcohol only in moderation — and skip sugared sodas.
•If you are overweight, lose 5 percent to 10 percent of your body weight.
•Start a daily exercise plan (if you are already lean, don't overdo it).
•How does an improved diet affect fertility?Chavarro says most of the dietary factors that improve fertility affect "the body's ability to respond to insulin, which in turn improves ovulatory function, either by reducing the amount of glucose in the bloodstream after a meal (e.g., favoring low-glycemic carbs), by improving the ability of muscles to respond to insulin (e.g., increasing physical activity) or even by affecting the expression levels of genes known to affect insulin sensitivity (e.g., avoiding trans fats).”
Folic acid and iron are "both very important in DNA replication and in the maturation of the egg prior to ovulation, and folic acid may improve the response of the ovary to follicle-stimulating hormone,” Chavarro says.
Eating high-quality protein also appears to be important, says Pak H. Chung, M.D., of Cornell University, primarily because gametes are essentially proteins.
•What should
