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Optimising Your Fertility

Lifestyle modification is the best initial management for couples seeking to improve their reproductive function.

Developing Healthy Eating Patterns
The biggest "rule" in lifestyle management is to ensure that you maintain a healthy, balanced diet. A poor diet, lacking in nutritional value, has been shown to have a negative effect on a person's fertility. The busy lifestyles of people today mean that we often consume more fast foods and pre-packaged foods. These types of foods are more processed or more refined and contain more fat, sugar and salt. They are low in vitamins and minerals. Poor eating habits such as skipping meals and crash diets can also result in poor nutrition.

The Effects of Weight on Health and Fertility
Having a BMI (Body Mass Index) either above or below the accepted normal range also has a detrimental effect on fertility. Women require approximately 17-21% of their body weight as fat in order to menstruate and ovulate normally.

Being overweight can affect your general health with an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. It can also cause periods to stop. This happens because increased weight can affect the hormonal signals to the ovaries as the increase in insulin levels produced may cause the ovaries to produce male hormones and stop releasing eggs. Low sperm counts and also sperm abnormalities in severely obese males can be attributed to exposure to considerable heat generated by the fatty tissue and hormonal imbalances. Women who are overweight and do fall pregnant, are also at a higher risk of experiencing hypertension, miscarriage, premature delivery, gestational diabetes, back pain, varicose veins and haemorrhoids.

However, even a small amount of weight loss (5%) may improve infertility. It has been found that women who lost weight over a six-month period, reduced the miscarriage rate from 75% to 18%. Weight loss can correct metabolic disorders, spontaneous ovulation may resume, and pregnancy rates may increase.
Women who are below their ideal weight of BMI or have low fat levels can experience irregular menstruation and anovulation (failure to ovulate). No major research has been carried out into nutritional deficiencies or severe weight loss in developed countries, however some reports suggest that deficiencies of iron, Vitamin B12 and Vitamin B3 are associated with reduced fertility. It has also been reported that low weight or extreme weight loss can lead to a decrease in an important hormone "message" that the brain sends to the ovaries in women and testes in men. The degree to which weight loss affects fertility will vary. In mild cases, the ovaries may still produce and release eggs, but the lining of the uterus may not be ready to receive an embryo because of inadequate ovarian hormone production. In severe cases, ovulation does not occur, and menstrual cycles are irregular or absent. In men, low weight or severe weight loss may lead to a decrease in sperm function or a decreased sperm count. If low weight or severe weight loss has been identified as the cause or a contribution to one's infertility, the preferred treatment would be to stop losing weight of even to gain weight if needed.

Optimising Your Fertility through Diet and Exercise
So, proper exercise and diet are important for maintaining good health and proper weight. Maintaining a healthy weight may help restore menstrual and ovulatory cycles in women and improve sperm production in men and consequently improve the chances of pregnancy.

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