Have you tried to conceive for over a year and is now referred to a fertility doctor?
Ever wondered what’s wrong with you and why it just doesn’t happen to you? Why is everybody around pregnant and it seems like you’re the only left behind?
Here I’ll share with you 5 things (or common reasons) that may affect your fertility. If you’ll be able to mitigate most of them you’ll be in a position where your fertility will skyrocket. But let’s start from the beginning.
What Is Infertility?
So how do doctors diagnose you with infertility and refer to a fertility specialist?
Basically there are four criteria that allow doctors to diagnose you with infertility:
- Inability to conceive a child after 12 months of regular and unprotected intercourse;
- The intercourse needs to be at least twice weekly;
- Inability to conceive with the same male partner;
- The male partner has no infertility concerns.
What does all this mean to you?
Hearing that you’ve been diagnosed with infertility sucks. But it’s not a ‘death sentence’.
For the most part, there are reasons or causes of infertility. Of course, you may hear “unexplained infertility” by some doctors. Though I truly believe that there isn’t such thing as “unexplained infertility”. There is always something that brings your body out of balance and doesn’t allow your body to do its job. It’s just a matter of finding it.
For the most part, infertility is caused by internal and/or external factors. And by internal I mean your nutrition and by external everything that surrounds you and makes an impact on your mood and well-being (like stress from your job or relationship). To find out the cause of infertility you need to look holistically at your body and your lifestyle.
5 Things That May Affect Your Fertility
So let’s look closely at some internal and external factors that may impact your fertility. Here I picked the ones that my clients face most often.
1. Stress
This is a big one and commonly overlooked by a lot of doctors and holistic practitioners.
Stress has such a big impact on our health and can easily get your body out of balance. And by out of balance I mean it’s like trying to plant a seed in the middle of winter versus trying to plant a seed in the middle of summer.
Our body has two states: fight and flight; and rest and digest. Whenever your body is in the fight and flight mode, the only thing it’s concentrating on is to keep you alive. And the reproductive system, as you can guess, is not designed for keeping you alive.
Leaving it unaddressed can mess up your hormones and as a result your ability to conceive.
So you see, knowing how to manage your stress level is so important, especially when you try to conceive.
There are a lot of ways to manage your stress and you’ll need to find the one/ones that will works for you (it could be also a combination of different ones). Some of the ones that my clients used are guided meditation, yoga, positive affirmation, exercises and, of course, a good sleep.
2. Inflammation
Generally speaking, inflammation is our body response to intruders (bacterias, parasites etc). So it’s a good thing because it protects you.
What is not a good thing is constant inflammation that can be caused by improper food digestion. Basically your body is keeping you alive by digesting foods and providing you with energy, vitamins and minerals.
Whenever your body isn’t able to break down certain food particles, they end up in our bloodstream and the first reaction of your body is to attack them (because it sees them as intruders). If this happens constantly, your body literally fights ‘what you eat’, leaving you with no energy and nutritionally depleted.
Some ways to mitigate inflammation is to find out what foods may be problematic to your body and eliminate them for a period of time. Holistic professionals can order a blood test for you to find these foods out.
If you don’t have a holistic practitioner who can do a food sensitivity test for you, start with the elimination of the common allergenic foods such as wheat, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, dairy and soy for at least 4 weeks. Then you can start adding them back one-by-one every 4 days and monitor the reaction.
3. Nutrient Deficiencies
Speaking about nutrient deficiencies. These can happen due to inflammation or due to the foods that you consume.
I don’t need to tell you that not all foods are the same. If your meals mainly consist of processed and refined meals – you’re in trouble. Why? Because you set yourself to nutrient deficiencies.
You see, food producers are legally forced to add certain vitamins and minerals back into processed foods. But these requirements are determined based on the average population deficiencies. So basically, only a few are added and the rest are left behind. But that ‘rest’ could set your body out of balance and leave you nutritionally depleted.
On top of that whenever your body isn’t getting enough nutrients, it will be taking them from you (your organs, bones), which will directly impact your fertility (including egg quality).
So make sure to load your plate with wholesome foods such as vegetables, fruits, good sources of protein (fish, poultry, eggs), fruits, nuts and seeds.
To avoid any potential deficiencies take a good sourced natural multivitamin.
4. Certain Medical Conditions
This is quite obvious. There’re certain medical conditions that may cause ‘infertility’. Some causes of female infertility are:
- Ovulation disorders (such as age, diminished ovarian reserve, PCOS, endocrine disorders, premature ovarian failure, tobacco)
- Tubal factors (such as tubal surgery, history of pelvic inflammatory disease)
- Endometriosis
- Uterine/cervical factors (congenital uterine anomaly, fibroids, endometrial polyps, poor cervical mucus quality/quantity, mucus hostility, uterine synechiae or adhesions).
Unless it’s related to some anatomical anomalies (like congenital uterine anomaly), the majority of other causes could be mitigated with lifestyle changes (such as with your diet, physical activity and stress management).
5. Lack of Physical Activity
Our bodies are designed to do physically demanding activities (like hunting, running, long-distance walking, just like we used to do, saying, in the Paleolithic era).
However, modern conveniences (transportation, grocery stores etc), office jobs made us physically less active and this drastically affects our health.
Whenever your body is physically active, more oxygen is delivered to your cells and organs, the faster the processes are running, the better you feel. All these directly impact your fertility, because you need healthy cells to improve your egg quality, for proper embryo development and for prevention of miscarriages.
And if you don’t like going to the gym, find the physical activity you’d enjoy like running, cycling, swimming, dancing etc. It’s recommended to have at least 30 minutes a day of vigorous physical activity.
So What Is Next?
The problem with our society is that we so much rely on quick fixes like drugs or surgeries. For the most part, the majority of modern diseases including infertility are acquired through what we eat or what we do every single day.
There are certain pills that can mitigate a symptom or alternate your body processes (like hormonal balances) but this quick fix might still not be effective and is associated with significant health risks and side effects.
Taking care of 5 things that affect your fertility will boost your health and fertility and isn’t associated with health risks and side effects.
So what’s on your way to fertility and becoming a mom?
Guest Post by Anna Reyes
Anna Reyes is a Holistic Nutritionist who helps women boost their fertility naturally and ultimately get pregnant. She’s passionate about supporting women going through infertility because she knows firsthand the struggle of not being able to conceive. https://naturafertility.com
