What is a Fertility Diet?

When you go searching for a fertility diet, for what to eat when you are wanting to conceive, what to eat when you want to improve your fertility or when you are struggling with fertility issues, there are very wise recommendations to follow.

These include eat organic and hormone free foods when you can, eat plenty of essential fatty acids, lots of vegetables, steer clear of processed foods, avoid alcohol – and the list goes on. Many women follow these guidelines and still struggle with fertility.

Chinese medicine looks at diet differently. Foods aren’t just categorized by proteins, carbohydrates, fats and fruit and vegetables; and how many calories you consume. Every one of us are vastly different. We are not the same physiologically. This is reflected in dietary therapy in Chinese medicine.

Understanding the energetics of food for a fertility diet

Each food has qi, its quality.

• They are either yin – cooling, moistening or yang – warming, drying and promotes movement.
• Food has a flavour. There are 5 flavours – salty, sour, bitter, sweet and pungent.
• Food has a temperature. There are 5 temperatures – hot, warm, neutrual, cool and cold.
• These all effect our body in certain ways.

When we eat, we want to create balance. If we eat too much of one flavour or temperature, it will create an imbalance in our system. This can affect our fertility.

However, we also all have a unique constitution, and different digestive capacity. This also needs to be taken into account when looking at a diet that will support our fertility goals.

Food as medicine

There is a saying, one person’s medicine is another person’s poison. Food is medicine. It can make or break our health. It can make or break our fertility goals too.

Let look at why this may be the case.

A woman on a raw fruit and vegetable diet comes in struggling to conceive. She has a tendency to feel the cold more than others, especially her hands and feet. She tends to bloat and feels puffy. Raw fruit and vegetables are cooling. It is cooling because most fruit and vegetables have a cool nature. It is not the temperature they have at that particular time, say if they have just come out of the fridge. The nature of the food is cool. This will create more cold in the body, yet she is already feeling cold. Her body already has too much yin – is already too cool. By continuing to eat this diet, she will become colder and more depleted. Her body fluids will slow down because she is cold, and her digestive capacity will reduce. She will become puffy, feel heavy, even though she is eating very healthy foods.

Now another woman comes in. She loves her fried and baked foods, lots of meat especially when they are spicy. This diet is yang in nature – warming and moving. They will increase the heat in the body and also circulation of fluids. If the woman already has a warm constitution – tends to feel hot instead of cold, has dry symptoms like dry hard stools, thirsty and sweats a lot – this diet will worsen her constitution. Yet this diet may be important that is cold and thin.

This is just an example food can affect our constitution. It is also important to look at the climate and whether the cooking method and style of food suits that climate. For example, I would not suggest a juice fast in the middle of winter, though in summer it would be more appropriate.

It is not just about what you eat

A fertility diet in Chinese medicine is a diet that restores our digestive capacity to enable to assimilate the food we eat into nutrition for our body. We want to ensure there is enough qi or energy, there is enough moisture and also blood for nourishment. As women, we need well-nourished blood to ensure the proper function of our reproductive organs. Our diet needs to ensure that our organs function as they need to. If there is a weakness in the system – we need to boost it. If there is an excess, too much cold or too much heat for example – we need to remove it.

When someone comes into the clinic – the first thing I look for is whether they are depleted. Depleted of energy and of blood. Are they dry or damp? Is their constitution robust, and tend to have more of an excess type body? Or is more of a deficient type body, where it needs to be tonified, nurtured to improve functioning? And of course then there is the mixed pattern of deficiency with excess.

When considering this – a fertility diet for one woman will be completely different to the fertility diet for another. They may need different types of foods to restore the function of the body’s organs to be able to conceive.

Diet and lifestyle recommendations are part of a Chinese medicine consultation for fertility. You can book a consultation to learn how to eat for your body here