Nutrition as factor affecting fertility: balancing the scalesYour weight is crucial for your fertility. Being very underweight or very overweight can make conception difficult or impossible. So it's important that your weight is within a certain range in order to give you the best chance of conceiving. Nature gave women proportionately more body fat for a specific purpose, in order to reproduce and then feed our young. That is why fat accounts for 27 per cent of an average woman's body weight, while it is only 15 per cent for a man. Fat is essential to fertility and it is necessary in order to ovulate. Young girls do not begin to menstruate until their bodies are composed of at least 17 per cent fat. Underweight If a woman's body fat drops too low, then her periods can stop. This low level of body fat may be caused by excessive exercise, as sometimes happens with ballet dancers or athletes who have very tough physical regimes. Infertility can also be caused by excessive dieting. When a woman is anorexic, for instance, her periods stop. With so much publicity about anorexia and an increasing number of young women falling victim to the 'summer's disease', the long-term damage to fertility caused by drastic weight loss is well-known. But not so many people realize that being overweight can also affect fertility. Overweight If a woman is overweight it can stop her ovulating. Studies have shown that just losing a small amount of weight, 10 per cent, for instance, can be enough to increase fertility by stimulating ovulation, improving hormone balance and making periods more regular. In another study, on women who previously did not ovulate, 11 out of 12 conceived naturally after exercising and dieting over a period of six months to get their weight down. Fortunately your dietary intake is fully within your control, and eating the right food may be the single most important thing you can do to achieve a successful pregnancy. *4/73/5* WOMEN’S HEALTH «Medications Without a Prescription» |
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