Nutrition

To optimize your health before you conceive, you should eat:

• Organic foods
• Essential fatty acids (nuts, seeds and oily fish)
• High fibre foods (fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, beans, nuts and seeds)
• Complex carbohydrates (wholegrains, beans, pulses and vegetables)
• Organic lean meat
• Organic eggs

You and your partner should take a general ante-natal vitamin and mineral supplement.

Certain supplements are particularly important to enhance fertility:

Folic acid prevents spina bifida in the baby, and, together with B12, it is necessary to produce RNA and DNA.

Zinc is an essential component of genetic material and a zinc deficiency can cause chromosomal changes in you or your partner, leading to reduced fertility and an increased risk of miscarriage. Zinc is also necessary to efficiently utilize the reproductive hormones, oestregen and progesterone and it is an essential nutrient for sperm health. It is needed to make the outer layer and tail of the sperm. Low levels of zinc in a man’s diet can result in poor sperm count.

Selenium is an antioxidant. It helps protect the body from free radicals and protect from chromosomal damage, which can cause miscarriages and birth defects. It is also important for sperm formation and raises sperm count.

Essential Fatty Acids are essential for healthy hormone and reproductive function. They produce prostaglandins which have hormone-like functions. Semen is rich in prostaglandins and men with poor sperm quality, poor morphology, poor motility and low count benefit from taking essential fatty acids.

Vitamin E is another antioxidant which has been shown to increase fertility, especially in men.

Vitamin C, another antioxidant, enhances sperm quality, protecting it from damage by free radicals. It also increases sperm motility.

L-Arginine is essential for sperm production as the head of the sperm contains huge amounts of the substance. L-Arginine can increase both sperm count and sperm quality. However, it should not be taken by people who have the herpes virus, as it activates the virus and cause an attack.

L-Carnitine, too, is found in large amounts in sperm cells, and it increases sperm count and motility.