While of course diet is just one aspect of fertility, what you put into your body can absolutely impact your reproductive health
Here are just a few of the dietary recommendations I give to all of my fertility patients to help encourage their reproductive health to thrive.
We’ll start with the main foods that could be sabotaging your fertility and should definitely be avoided or at least significantly reduced.
1. Gluten
Most wheat (and corn & soy) are sprayed with glyphosate, which significantly impacts health and fertility. In humans, it is a chelator of magnesium, iodine, zinc, iron and cobalt. It lowers B12, glutathione and biotin, which are important to the liver’s ability to detoxify. Liver health is essential to hormone balance, reproductive health and fertility.
I encourage all of my fertility patients to immediately remove all gluten & wheat products from their diets. I also encourage them to only choose organic corn and soy products as well.
Using a liver detoxifying product like my Detox Tea can help to improve decreased liver function due to glyphosate damage, and because glyphosate also acts as an antibiotic, damaging important gut microflora, I also recommend a probiotic.
2. Dairy
There are tons of articles out there about why dairy is damaging to your health, so instead, I want to encourage you to think about dairy energetically. Think about the difference between milk and water. Whereas water is clear and fast-flowing, milk is thick and cloying. It’s sticky. Think about that mucusy film you get on the back of your throat when you drink milk. Dairy does that to your whole body. It slows things down, energetically. It can contribute to the formation of cysts and fibroids.
I view dairy as the number 1 destroyer of fertility and have actually chosen not to work with women who won’t remove it from their diet. Yes, I’m that serious.
Below is a list of foods that are rich in calcium, so you don’t have to worry that you’re not getting sufficient amounts (although in reality, dairy may leach calcium from your bones, but that’s a whole other topic)
IT’S EASY TO GET ENOUGH CALCIUM WITHOUT DRINKING MILK
- white beans
- bok choy
- broccoli
- oranges
- almonds
- dried figs
- kale
- black eyed peas
3. Foods That are Raw, Iced, Cold
So many women come into my office, expecting me to praise them for their juice diets, their raw food diets, their big salads for lunch and dinner. I almost feel badly breaking the news to them that all of this cold, raw food can actually be detrimental to their fertility.We want to think of our digestive systems, which sit so closely to our wombs, as a furnace, and we definitely want to keep our digestive fires burning. If we are constantly dampening the fires with our iced coffees, our iced smoothies, our raw foods, our huge salads… eventually our digestive fires will go out. We need to keep that fire burning to not only break down and absorb the nutrients from our foods, but also to keep our reproductive organs warm. Warming foods, both in temperature (bone broth, stews, hot tea) and energy (cinnamon, ginger, fennel) are essential for rekindling our digestive fires to also stoke the warmth of our wombs.
NO DAIRY
NO GLUTEN/ NO GRAINS
LIMITED ALCOHOL (NO MORE THAN 1 DRINK A DAY)
LIMITED RAW VEGGIES
AVOID SUGAR
AVOID ARTIFICiAL SWEETENERS
“Artificial sweeteners are potent nerve toxins and never should have been approved as safe for human consumption. They have the potential to freak out and damage your nervous system — your brain and nerves — leading to a variety of symptoms from migraine headaches to unexplained seizures, dizziness, depression and vision problems. They are even linked to cancer, obesity, and diabetes.”
-Dr. Ginger Southall of the Hippocrates Health Institute
THE DIRTY DOZEN
(Produce to avoid unless it’s organic)
- celery
- peaches
- strawberries
- apples
- domestic blueberries
- nectarines
- sweet bell peppers
- spinach, kale and collard greens
- cherries
- potatoes
- imported grapes
- lettuce
THE CLEAN FIFTEEN
(Produce safe to consume in non-organic form)
- onions
- avocados
- sweet corn
- pineapples
- mango
- sweet peas
- asparagus
- kiwi fruit
- cabbage
- eggplant
- cantaloupe
- watermelon
- grapefruit
- sweet potatoes
- sweet onions
Fertility-Friendly Snack Ideas
- Eggs cooked in butter/ olive oil/ avocado oil
- Matcha tea powder mixed with full fat coconut milk & stevia
- Bulletproof coffee: coffee with butter or MCT oil & collagen
- Bone broth or vegetable broth
- Turkey lettuce wraps with avocado oil mayo
- Unsweetened almond milk (no carrageenan) + Chai Tea
- Nut butter (unsweetened; 1 tablespoon per serving) on a piece of dark chocolate
- Nuts (1 closed handful per serving, about 2 tablespoons)
- Meatballs with spaghetti squash or zucchini “noodles”
Follicle Supporting Foods
- bone broth
- good fats: avocado, butter, olive oil, coconut milk
- dark meat chicken, duck,
- egg
- asparagus
- seaweed, kelp
- sweet potato
- black sesame seeds