Getting Pregnant Naturally

by Winifred Conkling

  For background on yoga postures and practicing the technique, check out a book on yoga from your local library, take a class at a local “Y” or recreation facility, or rent a yoga video. For professional assistance, look in the Yellow Pages under “yoga” or contact the Integral Yoga Institute, 227 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011, (212) 929-0586.

  FERTILITY CHECKLIST

  COUPLES

  Have an orgasm.

  Join a fertility support group.

  Don’t adopt a child because you think it will help you conceive.

  Practice stress management, including:

  Biofeedback

  Deep breathing

  Massage

  Meditation

  Progressive relaxation

  Visualization

  Yoga

  8

  Lifestyle: Keys to Conception

  To conceive a child is a remarkable feat. Think about it: It requires precise timing, exquisite hormonal balance, overall good health—and perhaps a touch of divine intervention. While some of these factors are beyond your control, how you live and how you treat your body can have an impact on your overall health and your fertility. That goes both for how you behave now and for what you may have done—or not done—in the past.

  HERS

  Lose Weight Gradually

  Your brain chemistry affects your fertility, and a sudden drop in body weight can throw off the release of gonadotropin-releasing hormone by the hypothalamus in the brain. Crash diets and the corresponding shift in weight can confuse the body’s hormone production, possibly resulting in infertility.

  If you are overweight, try to lose weight, if possible. Ideally, you should not try to get pregnant until you lose the weight and give your body a chance to adjust to your new physique. Take at least one month of dieting for each six or seven pounds you want to lose (or gain). After reaching your target weight, wait six to eight weeks to give your hormone levels a chance to stabilize before trying to get pregnant. (More under Couples.)

  Exercise—But Not Too Much

  Regular exercise can help keep you lean and fit, but excessive exercise can keep you from having a baby. If your body fat level dips too low, you may stop ovulating. Or, if you work out more than an hour a day, you may disrupt the timing of your reproductive hormones.

  One study found that women who exercised vigorously for more than an hour a day were more likely to experience infertility. Researchers speculate that the endorphins—the feel-good chemicals released during exercise—may alter a woman’s prolactin levels, interrupting the timing of ovulation. Don’t use the information as an excuse to turn flabby, just exercise in moderation.

  Moderation means different things to different women. Strive to work out at least twenty to thirty minutes three times per week, but not more than sixty minutes six times per week. Choose any activity that you enjoy, even running or jogging (unless you have had a problem with miscarriage or your gynecologist recommends against it).

  Limit Your Use of Caffeine

  It appears that the less caffeine you consume, the more likely you are to get pregnant. Research done at the National Institutes of Health show that drinking as little as one five-ounce cup of coffee—or other foods with the equivalent 115 milligrams of caffeine—can halve your chances of becoming pregnant in any given month compared to women who do not consume caffeine. Another study found that one caffeinated soft drink per day caused the same 50 percent decrease in conception. While not all women seem to respond to restricting caffeine consumption, it can’t hurt to give it a try. You can substitute decaffeinated beverages or herbal teas, if you wish.

  HOW MUCH CAFFEINE?

  Food Portion Caffeine (mg)

  Chocolate

  baking, unsweetened 1 ounce 58

  chocolate chips ¼ cup 14

  (semisweet)

  milk chocolate 1 ounce 5 to 10

  Cocoa

  hot cocoa mix 1 ounce 5

  unsweetened 1 tablespoon 12

  cocoa powder

  Coffee

  brewed 6 ounces 105 to 165

  brewed decaf 6 ounces 2 to 5

  instant 1 teaspoon 57 to 66

  instant decaf 1 teaspoon 2

  Soft drinks

  Cola (diet or regular) 12 ounces 35 to 50

  Tea

  brewed for three 6 ounces 36

  minutes

  instant 1 teaspoon 31

  Note: Many pain relievers also contain caffeine, often 30 milligrams per tablet or more. Alertness tablet typically contain 100 to 200 milligrams per tablet.

  Be Wary of Antibiotics

  Antibiotics do a tremendous job of killing disease-causing bacteria, but unfortunately they can’t differentiate the good bacteria from the bad. As a result, after taking a course of antibiotics, many women develop vaginal yeast infections. Often the culprit is an overgrowth of Candida, a type of yeast that leaves the vagina inhospitable to sperm.

  To help restore the good bacteria as quickly as possible, try eating yogurt containing live acidophilus cultures or take acidophilus tablets (available at health food stores). You might also drink acidophilus milk, available in many grocery stores. While some health care practitioners may even suggest you insert plain yogurt directly in the vagina, if you are trying to get pregnant you should not put anything containing bacteria inside your vagina.

  Give Up Breastfeeding

  If you have already had a child and you are breastfeeding, you may need to stop nursing to conceive your next child. Women who do not breast-feed often find that their menstrual cycles return four to ten weeks after childbirth. However, nursing mothers may not ovulate for a year or more, depending on the baby’s feeding patterns.

  Each time your baby nurses, the brain suppresses the hormone that triggers ovulation. In most cases, ovulation will resume when the baby goes more than four hours between feedings during the day and more than six hours at night. Keep in mind that breastfeeding is not a reliable method of birth control. Ovulation can occur irregularly during nursing, and you may release one egg before experiencing your first menstrual period.

  HIS

  Wear an Athletic Cup During Sporting Events

  Your testicles need to be handled with care. They contain a delicate collection of tiny tubes, ducts, and vessels that can be damaged or scarred by trauma. So, if you’re planning to engage in sports that can lead to accident or injury, be sure to wear a protective cup.

  Get Off Your Bike

  Cycling may be great for physical conditioning, but it’s not so great for babymaking. Researchers at the University of Southern California School of Medicine found that cyclists who pedaled one hundred miles a week or more often suffered from “biker’s impotence,” a condition characterized by difficulty in getting and maintaining an erection for a day or two after biking. The thrusting and banging of the groin against the bicycle seat while pedaling can damage the nerves and arteries in the genital area. To avoid this problem, rise from your bike and support your weight with your legs periodically, or scale back on your riding during the times you are trying to get pregnant.

  Keep Your Testicles Cool

  The human body is designed to keep the testicles cool. In fact, the scrotal sac is housed outside the body so that the testicles can remain about two degrees cooler than the core body temperature. (The scrotal sac normally keeps the testes at between 94 and 96 degrees F.) Evidence suggests that if the temperature of the testicles rises above 96 degrees F, sperm production and motility is impaired.

  In some cases, lowering the scrotal temperature can help make an infertile man into a father. To keep things cool, try the following:

  Avoid hot tubs and saunas.

  Wear boxers rather than briefs or tight bikini underwear. Tight undergarments may heat things up—and not in a way that will enhance your chances of getting pregnant.

  Avoid wearing synthetic fibers during exercise. Lycra shorts can trap the heat, especially during a workout.

  Exercise, bu
t avoid workouts that heat the testicles. Rowing machines, cross-country ski machines, treadmills, and jogging are the worst culprits when it comes to overheating. Swimming and yoga are good alternatives. After exercise, allow your testicles to hang free and cool off.

  If possible, avoid occupations that keep you in the heat. For example, welding or boiler maintenance operators can work in environments that routinely reach a sperm-killing 120 degrees F.

  Try a cold water treatment. One study found that spraying the scrotum with cool water for two minutes in the morning and evening improved sperm counts in half the men studied.

  Give Yourself Time to Recover from Illness

  Your body produces about 50 million sperm each day, but it takes about three months for those sperm to be ready for action. It takes about seventy-eight days for sperm to be produced and twelve days more for them to mature. Any kind of viral illness with a fever—even a bad cold—can lower sperm counts for the full three months. The medications you take to treat an illness can also interfere with sperm production. If you have a normal or high sperm count, illness may not lower your sperm count enough to interfere with conception. But if your sperm count is more modest, it may be enough to cause temporary infertility. So be patient; give your sperm time to bounce back after an illness.

  Take Steps to Manage Diabetes

  Diabetes can wreak havoc on your body—and your sex life. The disease can damage sperm production, and it can cause progressive damage to the blood vessels and nerves in the penis, sometimes resulting in impotence. An estimated 22 to 55 percent of all diabetic men are impotent. Some—but not all men—regain their potency when they bring the illness under control, either by exercising and losing weight or by taking supplemental insulin. To protect your fertility, consult your doctor and take steps to control the illness if you are diabetic.

  Find Out if You’ve Had Mumps—and Get the Vaccine if You Haven’t

  Mumps is a virus that can cause infertility if it reaches the testicles of a male who has passed puberty; severe cases can damage tissue before puberty as well. (Most childhood cases of mumps do not impair fertility.) Not every case leads to sterility; in roughly half the cases, the virus does not damage the testicles. Other times only one testicle is damaged and the other can compensate.

  Fortunately, only about 18 percent of mumps cases occur in men during or past puberty, and in 70 percent of those cases, the virus infects only one testicle. Even if both testicles are affected, when properly treated the disease can usually be stopped before it damages both testicles. In fact, only 5 percent of men who contract mumps become permanently sterile.

  If you have not had mumps, talk to your doctor about having a vaccine against the disease.

  Treat Varicocele

  A varicocele is a varicose vein in the spermatic cord inside the scrotum. These enlarged veins (like those that can form on the backs of the legs) may cause infertility in some men by increasing the temperature inside the testicles. Most varicoceles form above the left testicle in one of the vessels that transport blood from the groin back to the heart.

  Varicoceles form deep inside the testicles. While the affected vein cannot be seen, in many cases it can be felt. The condition is said to feel like “a bag of worms” over the top of the testicles. The condition is not painful; in fact, about 8 percent of all men have them, often without experiencing infertility or other problems. However, researchers have found that the condition in roughly 30 to 40 percent of infertile men, and fully 80 percent of those with varicocele have abnormal sperm profiles.

  A varicocele can be tied off surgically. In most cases sperm production improves three to six months after the procedure, and in some men up to a year later. About half of all men who undergo treatment regain their fertility following the surgery.

  WHAT IS “NORMAL” ANYWAY?

  It only takes a single sperm to fertilize an egg, but millions of the little swimmers are present in the ejaculate of fertile men. A normal sperm count includes at least 20 million sperm cells per milliliter of ejaculate, or approximately 150 million to 200 million per ejaculation.

  Typically, at least half those sperm are “motile,” or moving forward, rather than swimming in circles. And at least 40 to 50 percent should be normally shaped. Ideally you want to have both quality and quantity when it comes to sperm, but to protect your fertility, it is better to have fewer high-quality sperm than an abundant supply of sub-par sperm.

  COUPLES

  Try to Reach—and Maintain—a Reasonable Weight

  You may not need another reason to worry about your weight, but evidence suggests that being too fat—or too thin—can affect your fertility. In men, being overweight can cause fertility problems because the testicles become surrounded by fatty tissue, making testicular temperatures rise and sperm counts drop. In women, too much or too little body fat can affect hormone levels and interfere with ovulation.

  Women’s bodies are particularly susceptible to weight-related fertility problems because women’s fat cells are like tiny estrogen manufacturing plants. While some estrogen is produced in the ovaries, 30 percent of the body’s supply—and 80 percent during certain points of your menstrual cycle—comes from the fat cells. The typical body fat for a fertile woman is 29 percent; a woman’s hormonal system can shut down and she can become infertile if her body fat is more than 10 to 15 percent above or below normal. One study of 276 infertile women with ovulatory dysfunction found that 6 percent of the women had problems because they were overweight, and 6 percent because they were underweight.

  Underweight women are often undernourished and have borderline vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Ultra-thin women often stop having their periods. Also, women who lose 10 to 15 percent of their total body weight (or one-third of their body fat) may stop having periods temporarily. Fortunately, weight gain often helps these women regain their fertility: One study of twenty-nine infertile women (each no more than 91 percent of her ideal body weight) found that those who were able to reach 95 to 100 percent of their ideal weight regained normal ovulation. Within one to three years, twenty-four of twenty-six of these now normal-weight women had become pregnant. Ideally, underweight women who have suffered from amenorrhea (absence of periods) should follow a balanced diet for three or four months after they resume menstruating before they try to conceive.

  On the opposite end of the scale, obese women (those more than 20 percent above their ideal weight) produce too much estrogen, which then strains the liver as it tries to break down the excess levels of hormone. The high levels of estrogen also disrupt the hormone system that tells the egg follicle to mature. In fact, oral contraceptive pills take advantage of this hormone response by creating an artificial hormone imbalance. Obese women require higher doses of hormones to induce ovulation than their lean counterparts.

  So, how much should you weigh? Your bathroom scale can tell you how much or how little you weigh, but not how fat you are. To assess your body fat, you can calculate your body mass index, or BMI. While bone structure and muscle development can influence accuracy, this method tends to be more reliable than a weight table, and it is accurate enough to give you an idea of whether you have a weight problem that may interfere with conception. Use the following formula:

  For example, for a five-foot, seven-inch woman (sixty-seven inches) weighing 135 pounds, the formula would be:

  If your BMI is 19 or less, you are underweight and may need to gain weight to enhance your fertility.

  If your BMI is 20 to 25, you are within your healthy weight range and your weight should not cause a fertility problem.

  If your BMI is 26 to 27, you are somewhat overweight, but your weight should not inhibit your fertility;

  If your BMI is 27.5 to 30, you should lose weight before getting pregnant.

  If your BMI is above 30, your weight may be affecting your fertility—as well as your overall health. You need to take steps to gradually lose weight, following a low-fat, high-fiber diet rich in fresh vegetables a
nd fruits.

  Where you put those extra pounds also matters. Fat around the middle (the “apple” body shape) is worse for your health than fat around the hips and thighs (the “pear” body shape). A recent study of five-hundred healthy female patients in the Netherlands found that “apples” were only half as likely to get pregnant as “pears.” In addition, a waist-to-hip ratio of more than 0.8 for women or more than 1.0 for men is associated with increased risk of heart disease. To calculate your shape, measure your waist at its narrowest point and your hips at their widest, then divide the waist measurement by the hip measurement.

  Quit Smoking

  You already know that smoking is hazardous to your health. You already know it can cause lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and a number of other serious health problems. But you may not be aware that it can also make it more difficult for you to get pregnant.

  THE FERTILITY DIET

  To lose weight—but not too fast—consume about fifteen hundred calories a day, with an emphasis on low-fat foods that enhance fertility. (Review the foods listed in Chapter 3, “Nutrition and Nutrition Supplements,” for a detailed list of foods that promote fertility.) The following food suggestions (prepared using low-fat cooking techniques) may also help: