A book titled ' Fertility Diet ' by some prominent Harvard Medical School researchers, suggests that ,among other things
, eating ice cream and cutting back on meat may help raise your fertility .
So many of the correlations between nutrition and fertility outlined in the book are based on a relatively small number of women . The findings in this book only apply to women with ovulatory
infertility ,a condition caused by irregular ovulation that effects fewer than a third of infertile women .
For a women with irregular ovulation ,attaining a healthy weight and taking a multivitamin with folic acid can improve her odds of getting
pregnant . The women taking the vitamins were not only more likely to conceive , but also more likely to have twins .
Being overweight or underweight can suppress ovulation , because both conditions throw off a woman's natural hormone level .
The heart-healthy diet recommended in the book might influence ovulation because they affect insulin levels. Then insulin levels,in turn , can affect sex -hormone-binding globulin, which can affect the amount of free androgen in a woman's body .But too much can suppress ovulation .
Although the nurses' study found associations between fertility and certain eating behaviors, it didn't test whether adopting new eating habits would make a difference .According to Walter C Willett , co-author of the book, in spite of the limits of the data , he believes it is ' highly likely' that the diet will help some women , given what is known about dietary influence on other body functions like blood pressure .
" The underlying principles are compatible with good health and prevention of some of the complications of pregnancy ," he said. " This is a good strategy anyway . It's going to be clearly safer , more modest approach to fertility than just jumping right into heavy medication ."
To their credit , the book's authors acknowledge early on that the research has limitations and that their diet doesn't guarrantee a pregnancy . Jorge E. Chavarro, the lead author ,said it had been a challenge to ballance the limitations of scientific research with the commercial demands book publishing. Even the simple title of the book , he added, belies the complexity of the findings .
" I would describe it as an apparently fertility enhancing dietary pattern , but that doesn't go with the flow of your reading ," he said . " This is not a cure for infertility. We have been very careful in explaining what we think these dietary changes can do and what they cannot do ."