Diet

It is never a bad idea to eat well. It can definitely be difficult, though, to concentrate on being healthy and eating good for you foods in the midst of the turmoil and disappointment that infertility brings. Researchers and doctors suggest that noshing on comfort foods or pick-me-up sweets can actually be detrimental to not only your waist line, but also fertility. I am a stress eater and I know that there are many others who also turn to carbs or chocolate when they are feeling low. In order to boost fertility, it is suggested that people trying to conceive seek out certain kinds of foods that will have a fertility benefit. It's really all… [more]

I recently went in for a thorough physical and got into a discussion with the Doctor about Vitamin D deficencies and new research that shows that supplements can really make a difference for women in regards to bone strength, fatigue, rates of certain types of cancer, and in a number of different areas. I was definitely intrigued, but agreed with the doctor that my results would probably come back fine considering that I got well more than the recommended amount of sunlight each week and tuna fish and salmon are two of my favorite meals. So, I was pretty surprised when my level came back really low and not only were supplements recommended, but a prescription was… [more]

When my husband and I decided to start trying for a baby we followed all of the recommended steps. We went to a pre-conception check-up, started trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle, had heartfelt discussions about our parenting philosophies, and I started taking pre-natal vitamins and folic acid thinking it could never be too soon. I religiously took my vitamins and folic acid for months and months until I began to feel silly. I began to slack off a bit on taking the vitamins every day since even the simple act of ingesting a prenatal vitamin made me feel like a fraud. I began to ask myself why I was even pretending that I would actually get pregnant and… [more]

There are quite a few tactics and techniques swirling around out there in the "world" of infertility that are supposed to help you conceive. I'll admit that at first I was reluctant to try most of them, but after a couple of years I was game for pretty much any suggestion. I must say that I think that the reality is that if you have fertility issues your baby-making position, daily aspirin regime, or time of day won't make much difference. There are definitely some things you can do that will help - charting ovulation, learning your cycle and peak days, watching your diet and getting healthy to name a few. Almost as many times as I was advised to… [more]

I'm starting a new type of birth control method this month, which means that I will be having a period again. With my previous method, an absence of a period was a very pleasant side effect for me. But now that I'm getting into all of the cycling again, I was wondering what foods I should be eating while menstruating. I know consciously the extreme changes my body goes through during the 28 days and I started to think about ways that I could support my body with food. Here is what I found from Women's Health Information Here are some basic dietary guidelines for you to follow during your period to help control your PMS and for better overall health: Be sure to get… [more]

Eating A lot of Beef May Affect Son's Sperm "In sons of 'high beef consumers' (more than seven beef meals/week), sperm concentration was 24.3 percent lower," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Human Reproduction. The team at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York studied data on the partners of 387 pregnant women in five U.S. cities between 2000 and 2005, and on the mothers of the fathers-to-be. Of the 51 men whose mothers remembered eating the most beef, 18 percent had sperm counts classified by the World Health Organization as sub-fertile. "The average sperm concentration of the men in our study went down as their mothers' beef intake went up. But this needs to be followed carefully before… [more]

Eating ice cream, avoiding skim milk could be beneficial to conceiving a baby? This sounds like a study that many women could jump on board with. With a small amount of cost and trauma. If I told my husband that ice cream consumption would help with his part in conception, I'd be scared to think how far he would go to help out! The researchers found that women who ate two or more servings of low-fat dairy foods per day, particularly skim milk and yogurt, increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by more 85 percent compared with women who ate less than one serving of low-fat dairy food per week. "The opposite was true for full-fat dairy foods, particularly whole milk," Chavarro told Reuters Health. Women who ate at… [more]

This picture is Licette Comanzo Walker, the owner of Comanzo and Company Speciality bakers (photo from Rhode Island Monthly). This is not just some posed picture to make you think some nice caring person is baking your cookies--these really are her cookies. She used to sell her cookies from home to a local coffee shop that I used to frequent. Now they're in fancy schmancy places such as Whole Foods and Oprah's green room. I do occasionally have a bad habit of eating while I write, but these cookies (English toffee, Spiced Chai, Caramel Apple--that one's particularly satisfying) are organic, made of the finest ingredients, and Licette seems to share the philosophy about seeking out small, passionate suppliers (small family run farms for… [more]

Aha, two of my favorite subjects coming together plus now I know where I heard that "Let food be your medicine" quote--our old buddy Hippocrates. Instead of putting in so much money into these cancer "fighting" drugs that have so many awful side effects (including death), why aren't we putting more money into organic food? Or why are we spending so much money and resources trying to make food "healthier" (with dubious long-term effects) with genetic engineering? My other personal motto is, "Don't mess with mother nature." Check out this article on how organic food "works out" more (just like free range chickens!) than lazy old fertilized food, and decide for yourself: ------------------------ EcoNews Newsletter No. 158 Serving the Vision of a Sustainable Vancouver Island April… [more]

(Pretend these ice cubes are your teeth floating in Coke...yum....) I had a high school friend who was inordinately fond (as most high schoolers are) of junk food and soda (which we call "pop" in Minne-SOHta). However, in college, I heard that he'd given up Coke. This was strange enough that I had to inquire why. He told me that he was now working at a popular barbecue joint in the Twin Cities called Rudy's. "You know what the grill looks like at the end of the night?" Actually, I was a vegetarian at the time, so I said, "No." He went on to tell me that it looked like several brontosauruses (brontosaurii?) had been cooked and melted on it. "It used to… [more]