Top 10 Fertility Checklist

Thinking about trying to conceive a baby? Or been trying for a while and feeling the stress and frustration set in?

This check list is for you.

ONE: PHYSICAL CHECKS

Get a full fertility and health check. This would include blood tests and ultrasounds for women to check hormone levels and uterine environment, including ovarian cysts, uterine polyps or fibroids, and a sperm test for men.

I’ve had people coming in to my clinic saying their Dr said to try for 1 year before spending money on blood, sperm, genetic tests or ultrasounds. I see their point but in my experience if you DO have something physical holding you back from trying to conceive- if it were me I’d want to know from the beginning. That way, if you or your partner do have anything to address, you can know about it straight away and prepare.
Natural fertility methods can really take time, or if you have a serious impediment, you can save yourself a year of ups and downs and emotional disappointments that I’ve seen so many go through when they could just hunker down straight away and try and address the issues.

And if there is nothing physically that stands out, you can start your preconception health routine straight away and feel good about your journey. As you continue on your journey, even if you find you have ‘unexplained infertility’, you have time to address these what we might call subclinical issues straight away.

TWO: DIET AND SUPPLEMENTS

Every person is different- we all have different tastes, genetics, and gut microbiomes, but as a rule you can start with preparing fertility by cutting down or eliminating foods that stress the body out such as processed white carbs and flours- eg supermarket breads (even gluten free), pikelets, cakes, crumpets etc, high GI foods such as chips, fast foods, soft drinks, sugary breakfast cereals, sugar in general and for many people, anything containing gluten as these can not only cause blood sugar spikes and crashes that affect energy and hormones, but create inflammation in the body and we want the healthiest, happiest body possible so that your body feels relaxed and wants to add the extra energy load of growing a baby inside it.

Which means that harsh, overly strict, fat free diets are also not what you are looking for. For fertility you do not want a fat free diet. You need good healthy oils and fats such as fish (especially oily ones like salmon mackerel, sardines, herrings), avocado, tofu, eggs, kidney beans. I do recommend dairy if you tolerate it well but strictly organic and in small doses such as biodynamic yoghurt and raw unhomogenised milk. There are plenty of coconut and alternative yoghurts you can try, I can recommend trying them but again, consuming in small doses.

For veges you want as low GI as possible, meaning leafy greens, asparagus, mushrooms rather than potatoes, carrots or parsnips.

For fruit- fruit is nature’s beautiful, colourful, magical comfort foods but go for organically grown, high antioxidant fruits such as blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Bananas actually also aren’t too sweet if you buy them and eat them before they start getting black spots on them and turning overripe.

If you must have breads go for local artisan sourdoughs or buckwheat breads that contain more protein less refined.

For the occasional treat or food comfort binge there are plenty of healthier, low GI chocolate and snack alternatives these days, even in supermarkets- such as Pana or Loco Love chocolates. Loco Love chocolates often have herbs and super foods in them and are extremely delicious! Plus other brands and local products.

With diet no need to get stressed out- strictness and worry aren’t really helpful for healthy hormones and are positively detrimental for improving fertility.

So while we do need to work on diet- approach feeding your body with ease and grace, and with love. It’s very tempting with fertility to put a strict checklist up, panic about results and want outcomes immediately and that’s very understandable.

But the best thing you can do is start making small incremental changes to diet and build it up with the joy of how beautiful natural healthy foods can be.

I highly recommend taking high quality specially formulated practitioner grade fertility supplements for both parties from as early as possible when you are starting to conceive. It is really worth going to a qualified naturopath, acupuncturist or health professional that is familiar with using supplements for fertility that can give you and your partner a personalised program for you. In the meantime you can start with a good preconception multivitamin that we use in our clinic from Naturobest.

THREE: LEARNING ABOUT TIMING AND BODILY SIGNS OF FERTILITY

Learn about your body - about your cycle and specific most fertile days right from the get go. If you have an irregular cycle, pain with periods, or any other reproductive health problems, this is the time to address these issues and maximise your chances of conception.

The best days for timed intercourse are the 4 days leading up to ovulation, the day of ovulation and one day after just to make sure you’ve covered your bases.

FOUR: REST - SLEEP CYCLES AND NATURE

There is something beautiful in nature called the sun. When it spreads those first beautiful rays of golden light, our bodies respond and start to produce more cortisol. Cortisol is our awake hormone, but also our stress hormone. Cortisol levels are meant to calm down in the afternoon and melatonin, your sleep hormone, should kick into place, and you start winding down and getting ready for a good night of deep rest.

Instead, many of us are tired from being up late the night before, likely working, or being stimulated awake by something entertaining on a screen (that secretes more cortisol and keeps you mentally active and awake) and then by the time morning rolls around, your cortisol has been depleted and does not want to kick in yet, despite the fact that the alarm has gone off and it’s time to go to work/school/uni/whatever it is. So we drink coffee to help us wake up, and then later in the evening, after a full day of secreting more cortisol (meeting tasks, deadlines etc) melatonin struggles to kick in, and we need wine or something to help us wind down and get ready for sleep.

This habitual dysregulation of our natural sleep and awake cycles has an overall effect on the health of our hormone relationships, including fertility hormones, so if I’m seeing someone in clinic I really do try to work on sleep cycles to help improve fertility.

Most of us live in towns or cities, surrounded by unnatural light, that keeps our bodies a bit confused, but did you know that viewing the sunrise and sunset every day can help reset your circadian rhythms, but also help your reproductive and mental health?

FIVE: EXERCISE - TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE

Too much or too little exercise are not great for fertility. Think about your circulatory system. The blood goes to your heart and brain first, and your digestive system and organs, and then the muscles that help you move around.The uterus, ovaries and gonads are the last areas to receive blood from our circulation.

If you are doing excessive aerobic or weight bearing exercise, that is taking blood away from the centre and distributing that to the exterior. I see many patients who are determined to stay strong and slim and run many kilometres a day or go to the gym before work and this takes blood away from the uterus and ovaries and to the exterior, hence why many athletes lose their menstrual cycles. So too much exercise can be detrimental for some people for fertility.

On the other hand, of course you want to move your blood, lymph and energetic circulations every day a little bit, so they don’t get tired, sluggish and malfunctioning. Oxygenated blood is pumped around the body by the powerful muscles of your heart to fill up all your tissues with beautiful oxygen and nutrients and make your body feel alive and healthy.

Deoxygenated blood is moved back to the heart via veins moved only by the surrounding muscles, so if you are sitting most of the day for your work, you need to move around to keep your circulation going or you will feel tired, drained, and eventually, unhealthy. Gentle walks, swimming, pilates, dancing and yoga are great ways to keep things moving and healthy that keep the blood moving in both the interior and exterior rather than just the exterior muscles. Many yoga poses are specifically designed to carry blood to certain organs, so you can ask your yoga teacher more about that.

For male bodies, exercise has been shown to improve sperm health with the exception of cycling, partially due to the tendency to be wearing tight lycra shorts. Testicals are situated outside the body for a reason- to keep them cooler, and cycling is not good for this unfortunately. I was once working with a couple in my clinic who took all the recommended steps towards improving their fertility (including IVF) but the husband refused to give up cycling, It was only when he broke his leg and couldn’t cycle for 3 months that they finally conceived

SIX: REMOVING CHEMICALS IN YOUR HOME AND DIET

There is so much documented evidence about the detrimental effects of chemicals over the past 50 years on not only human but animal reproduction. These chemicals are known as EDCs (endocrine disrupting chemicals). In wildlife there are seals getting fibroids, dolphins getting cancers that affect fertility, fish that are overweight, tadpoles and fish with 2 heads and poor morphology at an alarming rate.

Around the world women are developing larger breasts, with breast tissue shown to be carrying plastics and chemicals on analysis. Babies are born with undescended testicles, unformed uterus, and it’s likely that many issues with reproduction and development have their beginnings while still in utero.

Chemicals are in our air, our food, our water, our medicines, the aeroplanes we fly in, the cars we drive in, and everything in between. Even the most organic produce may have a nearby farm that sprays and some of it gets out into the air. Every time we fly internationally we are exposing ourselves to radiation. Every x-ray or scan adds to the mix.

And there’s not much we can do about it (other than educating, protesting, trying to create changes but all that takes time). If you are in the meantime wanting to improve the likelihood of your body wanting to conceive, you can minimise the load and it can and does make a difference clinically.

You can eat organic as much as you can, particularly highly sprayed items such as strawberries and berries.

You can use non-toxic make up and nail polish, and use natural cleaning products in your home - there are many on the market these days so you should have no trouble finding them. You don’t need bleach and harsh chemicals to keep a home beautiful and clean.

You can avoid processed foods, sugars, anything with numbers in the ingredients instead of actual foods.

You can use natural shampoos and cut down on chemical hair products and adapt to a new way of being and still look groomed and professional at work. Your life, or the little life you are trying to make, may depend on it.

SEVEN: ALCOHOL AND OTHER FUN STUFF

Alcohol is sugar, and often chemical, heats your body up, and is very yang. I know it is deeply imbibed into our culture but eliminating this from your weekly diet, for both males and females, is important for fertility. For women drinking alcohol when trying to conceive or doing IVF has been related to an increase in miscarriage and in males can lead to decrease in testosterone and sperm production.

Nicotine found in vapes or cigarettes may cause impaired ovulation, irregular periods and a higher risk of miscarriage. In males they may lead to erectile dysfunction and poor sperm production.

EIGHT: SPERM IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS A BEAUTIFUL HEALTHY EGG

When it comes to conceiving a child it definitely takes two to tango. Sperm health is often overlooked but is equally important to healthy conception as the egg is. Having a sperm test and a DNA fragmentation test early in the piece will help you get an idea of how the sperm are functioning. A typical test will check for sperm count, motility and morphology. Overall sperm quality has reduced by 50% in the past 20 years.

While it may be true that if you choose to do IVF you only need to find a few workable sperm to inject into or place into a petrie dish and hope that it finds the egg and becomes a healthy embryo.. If there are problems with sperm including DNA fragmentation and anti sperm antibodies, that IVF cycle may still end up with no embryos, so it is worth doing everything possible to improve sperm and egg quality even before embarking on IVF cycles.

It takes a minimum of 4 months to be able to improve the next sperm cycle so it really is something worth addressing straight away by giving up alcohol, smoking/vaping, cycling, reducing stress levels and increasing fresh foods and fertility specific supplements such as Naturobest male preconception multivitamin, zinc and CoQ10.

NINE: STRESS

There’s no doubt that stress affects your body in many different ways- including increasing cortisol production which has an effect on your hormones including potentially lowering progesterone which you need for the embryo to burrow into the uterus (healthy trophoblast activity) and for you to strongly hold your pregnancy.

Also a body in constant stress is designed to try to manage that stress instead of feeling safe to allow the extra load on the body that a pregnancy would create.

Add to that inflammation, fatigue and a chronic low or higher grade auto immune response that can also factor against a healthy conception and ongoing pregnancy.

Of course some stress is natural and our bodies are designed to cope with a certain amount. But we are not built or designed to cope with constant extreme stress and pressures so it can be helpful to have a daily practice of meditation, yoga, kirtan/mantra singing (see my blog post about that here), getting out in nature, gentle (not forceful!) exercise and a healthy attitude towards work and it’s place in your life. Taking even one minute breaks to sit quietly and breathe even while working in a busy office or workplace can help prevent the feeling of hurtling through a working day without stopping.

TEN: IMMUNE SYSTEM, GUT HEALTH AND VAGINAL MICROBIOME

Recent evidence has come to light that a certain percentage of fertility problems can be traced back to having bacterial vaginosis or other hidden pathogenic factors in the vaginal environment so I now screen all my patients when possible for a full vaginal microbiome test (your health practitioner can become registered with nutripath.com.au if they are not already and can order the tests for you). I also like to screen for gut health and allergies as food intolerances and digestive problems can contribute to low mood, depression, anxiety, as well as creating auto immune responses and stress to your body. A stressed or very tired body may struggle to have the energy or innate instinct to allow a pregnancy if it is already dealing with a lot.

In the above list you may find all or only some of it that resonates or feels appropriate to you - and that’s up to you to work through each one and see if it might be a contributing factor in your fertility journey.

I wish you all the best and wish you love, health and happiness on your path to becoming a parent.