The Right Lifestyle to Improve Chances of Pregnancy

There are several reasons underlying why women are hard to conceive. These include, possibility of a structural problem with the reproductive organs, like blocked fallopian tubes, or a disease of the uterus like fibroids or endometriosis.

Most of the cases are due to a failure of ovulation. The eggs do not ripen and release when they are supposed to, usually caused by a hormonal imbalance. And at older age, our body is not producing enough sex hormones at the right time and in the right amounts to ovulate successfully.

There are good news to couples who are trying to conceive, without having to undergo methods of assisted reporductive technology. In late 2007, the US. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School say that adopting a few lifestyle measures can drastically improve the chances of getting pregnant, at any age.

They followed a group of 17,544 married women who were infertile due to ovulation failure but who were trying to get pregnant. The women were part of a larger study of women's health called the Nurses' Health Study II, based at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard. The researchers followed them over an eight-year period, looking in particular whether or not they followed a range of dietary and lifestyle measures.

They looked at:
- the ratio of mono-unsaturated to trans fats in their diet
- protein consumption (and whether it came from animals or vegetables)
- carbohydrate consumption (including the amount of fibre they ate, and whether high or low glycaemic index)
- consumption of dairy products (and whether low or high-fat)
- iron consumption
- use of vitamin supplements
- body mass index (BMI, i.e. weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in metres)
- degree of physical activity.

The researchers took into account whether a woman smoked, drank alcohol or coffee, and/or had used oral contraceptives in the past.

Those women with the lowest rate of infertility (and most likely to fall pregnant) were those who ate less trans fat, less sugar, ate food with a low glycaemic index such as pasta and whole grains, ate more protein from vegetables than from animals, had a good iron intake, took multivitamins, exercised daily, kept their BMI between 20 and 25, and (surprisingly) consumed more high-fat dairy products and less low-fat dairy products.

The more of these measures they adopted, the lower the infertility rate and the higher the pregnancy rate. This was regardless of the woman's age, or whether she'd had children before.
For example, those who adopted just five of these measures had a 69 per cent reduced risk of infertility compared to those who adopted none of the measures.

Even following just one of these lifestyle measures reduced the risk of infertility by 30 per cent compared to those women who followed none. Of all the lifestyle measures, weight and diet, rather than exercise, were the most important.

These measures improve fertility was believed is to be caused by improved insulin resistance. They help regulate insulin and blood sugar levels and this in turn may help the sex hormones to regulate ovulation successfully.

Why high fat dairy products help remains a mystery though.
Now adopting these measures won't necessarily work for other types of infertility, such as blocked fallopian tubes. But what it does mean is fertility due to ovulation problems, which account for most infertility cases, can be partly prevented through modifications of diet and lifestyle, the authors say.

The researchers also added that these measures are also good for the pregnancy if a woman does conceive. Taking multivitamins containing folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects in the foetus. And keeping weight down reduces the chances of pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia.