Diet and lifestyle can have a direct impact on your ability to conceive. How? Eat the wrong foods, or participate in the wrong habits and your immune system can be compromised. Without a healthy immune system your organs can’t perform properly and your blood can’t flow the way it should. This can all create an imbalance in your body that prohibits one of its most important jobs: conceiving and nurturing a baby.
It doesn’t matter whether you follow traditional western medicine or a more eastern philosophy to tackle your infertility issues, taking better care of your body is always a good idea when you are trying to conceive. After all, if you don’t give your body the proper mix of vitamins and minerals, how can you expect it to handle such a complicated (and important) job as creating another living being. So, where should you start when trying to improve your overall health? Let’s begin with the basics: what you eat:
Dietary Guidelines: Eating for Two
We’ve all heard pregnant women say “I’m eating for two,” as they pile the food on their plate. The fact is you should begin eating for two long before a baby is ever growing inside of you. Now, I don’t mean adding 2,000 extra calories to your diet. I mean, learning to eat in a way that makes your body strong and able to work at peak efficiency. If you don’t eat properly, your hormones could be thrown out of whack; your organs will fail to work in unison the way they need to; and you won’t fail to get pregnant. Not that diet can fix any infertility problem, but it sure is a good place to start.
Food is the source of all energy. But, did you know that different types of foods have their own quality of energy? Well, they do! Too much (or too little) of certain vitamins and mineral containing nutrients and your body won’t be balanced. This imbalance can restrict its ability to work the way it should and could affect your fertility. According to Chinese medical philosophies, the Shen (or kidney and spirit) oversee a woman’s the reproductive system. While you are looking at the many reasons why you can’t get pregnant, you may want to consider boosting your Shen with an intake foods like walnuts, black sesame seeds, barley, tofu, soybean, wheat germ and seaweeds.
So, what dietary changes should you consider when trying to conceive? Here are a few all women should adhere to (no matter what their fertility obstacle):
Get Plenty of Fatty Acids
Every living cell in your body requires sufficient amounts of linoleic acid and alpha-linoleic acid to stay healthy. They are also a key to ovulation, so eating plenty of fish, fish oil, soy, eggs, broccoli, and dark green vegetables can all help prepare your body for the job ahead.
One Important Note Here: while eating fish is a great way to get essential fatty acids in your diet, pregnant women (and those who are trying to get pregnant) need to avoid fish that are at the top of the food chain (shark, flake, tuna, etc). High levels of mercury are often found in these fish and the higher you go on the food chain, the more mercury is found. Not sure which fish to avoid; use this simple rule: stay away from fish that eat other fish to survive.
Scale Back on Acidic Foods
An uneven PH level in your reproductive system can inhibit conception, so be sure to eat plenty of non-citrus fruits, vegetables, sprouts, cereal grasses and herbs to even out those Ph levels.
Eat Plenty of Cruciferous Vegetables
Cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts all contain the compound Di-indolylmethane (DIM), which is known to increase the metabolism of Estradiol ( a form of Estrogen) in the body.
Eat Only Organic and Hormone Free Meats
The foods we eat aren’t always good for us – even if it isn’t considered “junk food.” For some women, the pesticides, chemicals and hormones found in today’s meats can also interfere with natural hormone production and cause infertility.
Every time you eat something that has an additive, preservative or artificial flavor, you are not only robbing your body of the chance to get the right nutrients from that particular food, but you are stripping your body of the nutrients it has already collected. How? When you add these elements to your body, it is forced to use valuable nutrients to detoxify it.
Avoid Refined Carbohydrates
Our bodies take the essential vitamins and minerals in the foods we eat and uses them to metabolize everything we eat. Unfortunately, when whole grains are refined, many of these important minerals are stripped away. If you eat too many refined carbohydrates like white bread, plain pasta and white rice, your body may be forced to tap into its mineral stores to get what it needs. This can oftentimes result in a zinc or folic acid deficiency in your body. This can be detrimental to a pregnancy and fetus. Sufficient levels of zinc are essential to increase sperm counts in men and too little zinc in either parent’s body can result in chromosomal abnormalities, and fetal death. A Folic acid deficiency can result in reduced production of eggs and sperm, as well as spina bifida if babies.
Avoid Dairy Products
Most dairy products these days contain high levels of hormones used to encourage the cows to produce more milk, as well as pesticides used in the feed they are given. Ingesting these hormones can cause your own levels to become altered and also corrupt a growing fetus.
Eliminate Caffeine, Nicotine and Alcohol From Your
Diet
All stimulants should be avoided when trying to conceive. Nicotine can age your ovaries and make your eggs resistant to fertilization, especially as you age; alcohol is extremely harmful to fertility, with western researchers reporting a 50% decrease in the success of treatment for women undergoing IVF who had consumed even minimal amounts of alcohol; and caffeine can restrict blood vessels in both men and women, causing fertility problems.
Avoid All Unnecessary Medications and Over the
Counter Drugs
Unless absolutely necessary, all medications should be stopped while trying to get pregnant since they can affect every organ of the body and the energy they emit.
Avoid Junk Food
Giving your body too much sugar, carbohydrates and an overabundance of other unhealthy foods can all contribute to infertility by not providing the right nutrition necessary to keep your body in its best and healthiest shape. For instance, eating too many saturated fats can interfere with the metabolism of those essential fatty acids you need, which can create a hormonal imbalance.
Note About Fruit
We have talked a bit about the negative impact refined sugars can have on your health and fertility. That does not mean that you should necessarily avoid eating fruit. Sweet by nature, many fruits offer a wonderfully healthy way to get the vitamins and minerals you need, as well as a way to get a sweet sugar fix. Eating a baked apple with honey can be a real appetite pleaser, as well as a friendly fertility food to indulge in once in awhile.
Fresh fruit can also benefit your fertility by help to calm your body – something refined sugars can’t (and don’t) do. There are some exceptions though. For instance, if you are internally very cool, you will want to stay away from all raw foods – including fresh fruits.
No matter what your internal temperature, it is always a good idea to stay away from both hot-energy and cold-energy fruits like pineapple, mangoes and melons when trying to get pregnant. Choose instead such energy neutral fruits as raspberries, grapes, apples and pears. This will help to ensure that the food you eat isn’t disrupting your body’s harmony.
Note About Raw Food
It would make sense that raw foods are better for you. Right? Not necessarily; especially if you are trying to get pregnant. Digesting raw foods takes a lot of energy – more so than digesting cooked (warm) foods. Now, if you happen to be one of those women with a cooler constitution, digesting those cool raw foods can sap your body of the Qi energy it needs to accept and sustain a pregnancy. This is especially true during colder weather. So, if you know you have a cooler constitution and are finding it difficult to get pregnant, stay away from raw foods of any kind. Heat up all foods, or at least keep them at room temperature. This should help boost your Qi energy, helping to give your body the support it needs to make your baby.
via Paleohacks Paleo Cookbook Review http://ift.tt/1tv9rJu
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