Fertility and Nutrition: The Importance Of a Healthy Diet for Reproduction

BRIEFING: Nutrition is of crucial importance for both our physical and mental wellbeing. In this monthly food section, we discuss everything related to food and food supplements that we consider of interest (don’t worry—there will be no recipes!), from recommended and not recommended foods

Should you and your partner change your diet when planning on conceiving? 

“Should we change our diet, now that we are trying to conceive?” is, likely, one of the most frequently asked questions heard in fertility centers. And while there is no one right answer to this question, here are a few possible answers under several different conditions. 

Nutrition is, of course, beyond important for our existence—it is essential! But there is relatively little evidence that nutrition makes much of a difference in conceiving spontaneously or conceiving through infertility treatments. The conversation on this subject, nevertheless, never ends. Here is a brief summary of how the CHR usually answers the question. 

We emphasize the importance of balanced diets, with some recent literature pointing toward the Mediterranean diet as potentially beneficial for couple trying to conceive.1  While a very recent systematic review found very little evidence for a benefit of such a diet on female fertility, the study suggested that it may improve sperm (i.e., male fertility).2  Other fertility experts recommend to their patient almost the opposite—a high-fat and meat and low-carbohydrate diet. 

The truth is that good studies on this topic do not exist. We suspect that whatever effects nutrition has on fertility may be indirect. What we mean by this is the following: As often noted in the VOICE, fertility providers do not like it when their patients demonstrate so-called inflammatory markers. In other words, we do not like inflammation, whatever the cause, whether it means autoimmunity, outright inflammation, or even simple allergies. (It is also important to remember that endometriosis and adenomyosis are inflammatory conditions). 

Whenever we detect evidence of inflammation in laboratory findings, or whenever a patient arrives at the CHR with a fitting medical history, we do recommend an anti-inflammatory diet, meaning abstinence from all gluten, dairy, and sugar. We have seen quite astonishing improvements in levels of inflammation in women with endometriosis who have pursued such a diet. But without laboratory findings, and/or appropriate symptoms, we do not recommend diet changes beyond a balanced diet. There is one exception: if patients experience repeatedly gastrointestinal or other symptoms after specific food, we recommend patients abstain from these foods while attempting pregnancy. The reason is that such symptoms (like bloating, excessive flatus, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and brain fog) often suggest that the relevant food item may be inflammatory to the patient. 

References 

https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2022/a-mediterranean-diet-not-only-boosts-health--but-also-improves-fertility/

Muffone et al., Nut Rev 2023;81(7):775-789