for anyone wishing to maintain a healthy inner environment. The following suggestions are more specific to improving fertility.18
•Fast foods and fried foods that contain excessive trans-fatty acids (TFA), which can potentially increase insulin resistance.19 This, in turn, can increase weight and impede ovulatory function, decreasing fertility potential. TFA are widely known to be unhealthy fats.
•Gluten-containing foods, which may disrupt hormone function, increase inflammation, tend to be higher on the glycemic index (which lists foods according to their impact on blood sugar), and increases body fat, which can disrupt ovulation.20 A diet with too many foods high on the GI can also increase insulin resistance, which I will discuss more in Chapter 6. If you are sensitive to gluten, a diet high in gluten can cause inflammation and activate autoimmune disorders (see Chapter 7), which can contribute to miscarriage.21
•Meats containing growth hormones and antibiotics, which can disrupt your natural hormonal balance.
•Fruits grown with pesticides. Eat organic as much as possible, since toxins can disrupt hormonal balance, but particularly avoid fruits such as peaches, pears, apples, grapes, celery, spinach, and strawberries if they’re not organic. Refer to the most updated list created by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which ranks pesticide levels on produce tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.22
•Alcohol. If possible, abstain altogether. I often see women who drink moderately, and if they have a negative pregnancy test, they have a drink; that is unlikely to affect their chances of conceiving in the future. However, a Danish study showed that women over thirty who consumed more than one drink per day were more likely to have fertility issues than women who consumed less than one drink per week.23
•Coffee and caffeine-containing teas and sodas. It’s best to reduce caffeine intake to less than 200 mg per day. Research has shown that two cups of regular coffee or five twelve-ounce cans of caffeinated soda can double risk of miscarriage.24 However, it’s difficult to assess how to keep within that 200-mg limit when another study found that twenty different commercial espresso coffees exceeded the maximum safety limit in just one cup (they contained from 200 to 322 mg per shot).25
•Dairy products, which contain insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), especially when taken from high-producing milk cattle.26 IGF-1 at high levels can increase insulin resistance, which can in turn affect proper timing of egg maturation, especially for women with PCOS (see Chapter 6).
•GMO soy products. Even for non-GMO soy products, do not exceed sixty grams (that’s three twelve-ounce glasses of soy milk) per day. Soy contains phytoestrogens (plant-based estrogens), which can upset hormonal balance.
Eating for fertility: How and when to eat
There is more to healthy eating than what you physically stick into your mouth. It is just as important to nourish your mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being as to eat a healthy diet. In TCM, this includes how and when you eat (and don’t eat). My aim is to put joy back into your eating experience while boosting your fertility. (NOTE: If you have celiac disease, are lactose intolerant, or have any known food allergies or intolerances, you will want to stay away from whatever you react to.) The following simple guidelines will help you look and feel better inside and out:
•Eat lightly cooked vegetables, as they are readily digestible (partially digested by the cooking process) but not overcooked to the point of losing nutritional value. Steaming or stir-frying vegetables lightly helps your digestion and enables your body to extract nutrients more effectively.
•Chew your food thoroughly. Breaking food down before it goes into the stomach helps the process of digestion.
•Try an eating meditation where you take a bite of your food, chew it well, slowly, and consciously (preferably with your eyes closed), noticing the textures and flavours in your mouth.
•Do not multitask while eating, as you might normally do. Just eat and breathe and notice the calmness that arises as you practice being present during your meal. You may even notice that this style of eating helps your digestion, since normally you may not chew your food as thoroughly and may gobble things down too quickly.
•If you are following a specific dietary regimen, treat yourself once in a while (ten to twenty percent of the time) without worrying about it. If chocolate is your vice, buy organic chocolate and enjoy every morsel. If you love the ritual and taste of coffee, drink a small cup of organic coffee once or twice a week. Make treating yourself a meditative and soulful experience. Ironically, as you begin to eat healthier foods, your taste buds may become more sensitive and, when you give in to a craving, the food may not taste as good as you imagined. That piece of chocolate cake with ice cream may taste sickly sweet and make you feel bloated. The good news is you can make your own treats and control the quality and quantity of the ingredients (like sugars).
•Stop judging what you (or others) are eating. Eating something “bad” does not make you a bad person. This type of self-judgement is tied directly to guilt and shame, both of which can negatively impact your physical, mental, and emotional well-being, and affect the environment into which you hope to grow a baby.
•Share and enjoy food with others. Humans in most cultures have been eating communally since the beginning of time. Sharing food with family, friends, and colleagues affects your natural healing response. It brings more relatedness, laughter, and joy to your life, which leads to physiological, psychological, social, spiritual, and quality-of-life benefits.27
•Eat at regular intervals and do not skip meals; this will help keep your blood sugar levels balanced.
•Prepare and eat home-cooked meals as much as you can. This allows you to control the ingredients in your food. It also enables you to make extra food to freeze in meal-sized containers for when you don’t have time to cook properly. You can also cook fresh vegetables, but make enough for two days. If you find it’s difficult to cook during the week, make several recipes on the weekend that you can eat and freeze. If you need to resort to take-away food sometimes, choose health-conscious establishments, avoid deep-fried foods, and make special requests such as adding more vegetables and decreasing high-carb foods.
NOTE: Often, my patients complain to me about the cost of organic food, yet not too long ago it was considered normal for the average family to spend forty percent of their income on food.28 In 1901, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey found that families from New York and Massachusetts spent 42.5 percent of income on food.29 Now it seems we want to spend less on food and more on material goods like cell phones and computers. Perhaps it’s not that organic food is too expensive, but that you might consider re-evaluating the cost of your health.
Vanessa’s spontaneous miracle
Having undergone several IUI and IVF cycles, Vanessa and her husband were taking a break from the stress of fertility treatments, although Vanessa was still doing acupuncture at my clinic and eating a balanced diet. She and her husband felt they had exhausted the technological resources in their hometown of Toronto and were researching the Colorado Clinic of Reproductive Medicine (CCRM) in Denver. They thought the CCRM offered more advanced testing than the Toronto clinic she was attending, and Vanessa and Robert met with the fertility doctor to discuss this option.
After the meeting, Vanessa noticed she
