fertility5 Preconception Tips to Enhance Fertility

So you’ve made the decision that you want a little addition to your family. CONGRATS! But where do you start? You’ve already started some prenatal supplements (great!), but you want to do more. 

Pregnancy journeys are not always as straightforward and simple as most women may think. I’m here to inform you of how you can increase your odds at conceiving and optimize your health and your baby’s health while you are at it.

Factors that Affect Fertility

Our day-to-day life of always rushing around, speeding from one task to another, quick meals on the go, and up late scrolling through Pinterest does nothing good for our fertility health. 

This lifestyle that we are all guilty of living has its downfalls. One major downfall is its effects on our health, and yes, our success with conception.

Gut Health

The health of your gut has a huge role in determining your overall health. Your gut can affect your hormones, your immune system, how you feel and think, the way your body absorbs nutrients, and can even impact the levels of inflammation within your body. 

A healthy gut can:

  • Enhance your baby’s microbiome
  • Reduce the likelihood of postpartum depression
  • Prevent GBS (Group B Streptococcus)
  • Encourage optimal immune system functioning

Your gut (or your gut microbiome, more specifically) is made up of different kinds of bacteria (aka good and bad bugs). These bacteria are necessary for optimal bodily functions and processes. 

The issue occurs when these types of bacteria become imbalanced (also known as dysbiosis). This is when your harmful bacteria overgrow and flourish while your beneficial bacteria are reduced. 

What causes these good bugs to die off and harmful bugs to overgrow? MANY THINGS! 

  • Stress
  • Excess sugars
  • Processed foods
  • Antibiotics
  • Food additives
  • Toxins (pesticides, hidden chemicals in daily products)

Your estrobolome, which is also an environment of a variety of bacteria, also resides in your gut. This bacteria, however, is responsible for estrogen regulation. 

Your estrobolome is capable of metabolizing and modulating the body’s circulating estrogen. If these bacteria aren’t balanced, it could lead to estrogen imbalances like estrogen dominance. 

Estrogen plays a huge role in fertility by creating an environment that makes pregnancy possible. It regulates your menstrual cycle and controls your uterine lining’s growth during the first part of the cycle. This is why you should prioritize gut health, so your estrogen levels stay balanced!

Hormone Imbalance

Speaking of hormones… while the health of your gut can highly influence estrogen levels, other factors could also impact your hormone levels. Since your fertility is significantly influenced by your hormones (aka chemical messengers), you should ensure they are at optimal levels to ensure the right messages are communicated effectively. 

While estrogen is important, we don’t want to forget about your thyroid, cortisol, progesterone, and testosterone too! If any of these are out of whack, it could inhibit successful conception. 

Like I stated earlier, about our busy, stressful lives… well, this can hugely impact your hormone levels. When your adrenals are overworked by attempting to produce cortisol in response to stress, they can eventually burn out. 

When your adrenals aren’t working properly, it can have a cascade of effects on all your other hormones, including thyroid, progesterone, insulin, estrogen, and even testosterone. Keep in mind that poor diet, toxic exposure, and other factors can also impact your hormone levels. 

Inflammation

Inflammation is a basic way that your body reacts to an infection or other injury. Inflammation is a type of nonspecific immune response. The issue with our lifestyle choices is that it increases this inflammatory response. We give our body processed foods, sugars, and toxins that signal inflammation. 

This inflammation doesn’t just come and go like it’s meant to. Inflammation stays around because we are continuously bombarding our body with stressors (toxins, foods that we are sensitive to, excess sugars, stress, etc.) that activate our inflammatory response. 

When inflammation is apparent throughout your body, it can lead to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance may affect fertility by contributing to endometriosis, PCOS, implantation failure, and recurrent miscarriages.

Nutrient Deficiencies

Having the right vitamins and minerals is extremely vital in creating a new human being! However, the American Standard Diet doesn’t contain nearly enough of the nutrients that we need in general, and definitely not enough for a healthy pregnancy. 

Even if you are consuming lots of vegetables, fruits, and greens, your body could not be absorbing these nutrients as optimally as it should because of poor gut health. Even if you are drinking green juices and eating the “right” foods, if your body can’t absorb them, it’s not doing your body and future baby any good. 

Here are contributing factors to nutrient deficiencies:

  • Poor diet
  • Poor gut health
  • Food sensitivities
  • Medications interfering with the absorption
  • Suboptimal nutrients in the soil

5 Preconception Tips to Enhance Fertility

You can see how all these factors that could affect your fertility are interconnected. To reach a healthy state and have the best chances of a healthy conception, you’ll want to focus largely on changing your lifestyle behaviors. 

I know this can be a challenge because adopting a new behavior can take time! But doing simple changes in your daily life can make dramatic changes in your health and ultimately your fertility outcomes. 

1.Manage Stress

Practice some meditation, yoga, or even breathing exercises to reduce your stress. This helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system allows your body to come out of the “fight or flight” state and into the “rest and digest” state, which focuses on digestion and reproductive processes.

2.Eat Organic, Whole Foods

Fueling your body with nutrient-rich foods is key to preparing your body for conception. When you choose organic, you are avoiding those toxic pesticides that disrupt your microbiome.

3.Avoid Environmental Toxins

Smoking, alcohol, heavy metals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, solvents, pesticides, pollution, and radiation have all been linked to miscarriage, preterm delivery, low birth weight, and birth defects. 

Environmental toxins can also play a role in everything we previously mentioned above- damaging your gut health, increasing inflammation, reducing nutrient absorption, and contributing to hormone imbalance. If a mother is exposed to high levels of any of these chemicals, issues with conception could occur. 

4.Get in Daily Movement

Getting in gentle movement every day can help promote a healthy lifestyle and wellness in general, but moving your body will also be extremely beneficial for when you become pregnant. 

Getting in shape now is a good idea because it can help you maintain that daily movement and routine during pregnancy. It can help keep the baby healthy and help with your endurance during labor. 

5.Get Tested by a Functional Medicine Provider 

Before you start trying for a baby, ensure your health is optimized as it will give you the best chance to conceive and make sure that your baby is set up to live a healthy life. 

Functional testing will allow you to discover if you have underlying imbalances within your body, nutrient deficiencies, bacteria overgrowth, toxins, or any other issues going on. Addressing these issues first will allow your body to function properly and give you the best chance to conceive.

Get in Contact with Annapolis’ Functional Medicine Doctor, Dr. Skye Stewart

If you plan to get pregnant within the next year, please schedule a Free 10-minute Consult or New Patient Appointment with Dr. Skye Stewart at Whole Health Integrative Medicine. She can work with you during preconception to enhance your fertility.

Dr. Stewart is currently accepting patients for in-person appointments at the Annapolis office and virtual appointments for patients throughout Maryland.