What Lifestyle factors might improve /reduce my fertility?
Smoking – The simplest answer is that you should quit smoking. Smoking is not only bad for your health, but can reduce your chance of falling pregnant and potentially affect your unborn child. When you smoke your chance of natural conception decreases. This decrease is persistent even with the use of IVF treatment if you continue to smoke. Smoking can cause restriction in your baby’s growth and can be harmful to the ovaries of the unborn baby girl. As for an unborn baby boy, smoking can be harmful for his sperm count in adulthood.
Alcohol – Most of the data about alcohol use is in relation to alcohol intake during pregnancy. There is no safe amount, no safe time or no safe type of alcohol recommended for pregnant women. As for someone who is about to fall pregnant, it would be advisable to avoid alcohol.
What to Do / Start Getting Right to Improve Your Chances of Falling Pregnant
BMI (Body Mass Index) – You should maintain an ideal body mass index to optimize your chance of falling pregnant. Being underweight or overweight can cause subfertility.
Underweight – If you do excessive exercise you can become underweight and therefore cause decrease in your fertility rate. If your BMI <20, you are potentially underweight. If you fall in this category, you should see your doctor to confirm this and work out why it is happening to you. One of the most common reasons is excessive exercise. You should reduce the amount of exercise that you do. You should lesson 5 hours of exercise per week. Overweight – When you are overweight, your hormones can become abnormal. Being overweight can cause your body to produce too much insulin.
This is called Hyperinsulinemia.
Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas. Insulin metabolizes carbohydrates in food to produce sugars, which give you energy, or to store glucose for future use.
Being overweight might cause excess androgen (testosterone – male hormone) production. This rise in turn affects ovulation by affecting the hypothalamus and pituitary gland dynamics.
The hypothalamic gland and pituitary glands are important parts in your brain that regulates your ovary function. It is like the “body clock”.
If your BMI is greater than 30, your success rate with fertility treatment will be reduced. This is because your egg quality deteriorates and your endometrium (lining of the womb/uterus) becomes less receptive to the embryo implanting in you.
Being overweight can also increase your chance of miscarriages.
What about Diet and Nutrition
Diet – There are no hard and fast rules regarding what is a correct diet for falling pregnant. Some data suggests that if you eat foods with lower glycaemic index (e.g. green vegetables, most fruits, raw carrots, kidney beans, chickpeas, lentils and bran breakfast cereals) that might in turn regulate your ovulation.
Overall a balanced diet such as Mediterranean diet with monounsaturated fats (healthy fats) and animal protein is recommended.
Multivitamin supplements are recommended for example Iron, Calcium, Folate, Zinc and Iodine.
If you have Coeliac disease, you need to see your doctor to make sure its well under control.
Caffeine – You should have less than 200mg of caffeine per day, which is about 1.5 cups of coffee.
What about Men’s Health?
Smoking – Causes decreases in semen quality. Semen quality test measures the semen volume, sperm concentration, total sperm count, sperm movement ability and sperm morphology (shape and form).
Semen quality worsens the heavier you smoke. This in turn will decrease your success rate of any fertility treatment such as insemination or IVF.
Alcohol – Heavy alcohol use by the male partner can cause abnormal testicular function. When the testes stop working properly, your testosterone production decreases, you can become impotent or produce less sperm.
Diet – There is little information regarding dietary recommendation for men.
Caffeine – For men, caffeine has little or no affects on the chances of conception.
Could my job or my partner’s job contribute to our problems? Stress factors:
Many fertility studies have found that being stressed can reduce your chance of falling pregnant both naturally and with fertility treatment. Furthermore, when you are stressed your relationship with your partner can be affected as well.
Recommendations are:
Identify any stressful factors in your life and address them individually.
If you have had a history of depression or anxiety in the past, you should see your family doctor to look at methods of getting that under control.
Dr Miriam Lee works in conjunction with Monash IVF – If you have any further questions regarding fees and what is included in your cycle, please contact Monash IVF on P: 1800 628 533 or
