Eat more plants and get pregnant easier, says University of Washington dietician and fertility expert

If you are trying to get pregnant, it might be time to improve your diet.

That is the message from dietician and University of Washington professor Judy Simon, who spoke Tuesday night at Gonzaga University.

When going through her own fertility journey in her early forties, Simon did not realize how eating well might have increased her chances. Since then, she has worked with couples to improve their diet in the months before pregnancy.

“Diet is frequently overlooked by folks, but you have a 90-day window before conception where changing some of these lifestyle behaviors can strengthen the egg in women and make a difference in sperm quality for men,” she said.

About 80% of heterosexual couples will conceive in the first six months of attempting pregnancy, and infertility can be diagnosed after a year of trying to become pregnant unsuccessfully. According to Simon, the biggest factor in infertility is age. Those older than 40 can expect their fertility to decrease by half.

Other causes of infertility are certain disorders that cause irregular periods and other symptoms that make pregnancy more difficult. Many symptoms of these disorders can be managed by dietary changes, which then improves fertility.

“A lot of women who maybe feel like they’re leading a wonderfully healthy lifestyle…they are very active. Maybe they’re training for marathons and they’re eating, but they’re not eating enough. That can cause hypothalamic amenorrhea, which can stop ovulation,” she said. “Nutrition is a fix here. You can give women estrogen. It’s not going to fix it; they’re going to have low estradiol levels anyway.”

Simon has also seen this effect in men, whose poor diet and excessive exercise can lower testosterone levels and decrease sperm quality.

“A lot of men don’t think their lifestyle can affect fertility, but it can,” she said.

According to University of Washington research she helped conduct, a “plant forward” diet can improve fertility within a few months. This diet includes more vegetables and fruit, whole grains, seafood, dairy and soy.

“These plant-forward diets offer a way to reduce inflammation in our body, and this can help promote a healthy uterine environment in women, which helps for implantation of the embryo,” she said.

In men, the research found that sperm quality increased when reducing consumption of red meat and replacing that protein with fish, nuts and soy.

While a healthy diet increases fertility, that does not mean excess weight is an indication of infertility. A big cause of infertility is polycystic ovary syndrome, which impacts sex hormones, causes weight gain and makes it difficult to get pregnant. Many overweight women experience infertility because of their PCOS, but their infertility is not impacted by their excess weight.

“Current evidence does not support recommending weight loss to improve fertility in women,” she said.

Many fertility clinics refuse to treat women who are over a certain body mass index, which “creates weight stigma and excludes a lot of people building families,” Simon said.

While a healthier diet has many other benefits, eating better can be a quick fix for those struggling to have a baby.

“We can make a difference in months. And in a much less invasive way than many other fertility treatments,” she said.