Preparing your body for a healthy pregnancy starts in the preconception period, 3 months prior to conception. This is the time when the oocytes are maturing, and are particularly vulnerable to nutritional and environmental stressors. During the preconception period, naturopathic doctors recommend targeted lifestyle enhancements and fertility supplements to help improve your reproductive success. Preconception care can start at any point in your fertility journey, whether you have just started to plan for a family, or you are preparing for a fertility treatment such as IVF.
Targeted lifestyle enhancement include fertility specific diet and exercise recommendations, optimizing body composition, reducing toxin load, and stress reduction strategies. To learn more about these enhancements see my blog post - ‘Diet & Lifestyle Strategies for Optimal Fertility.’
In addition to fine-tuning your lifestyle, evidence-based fertility supplements are recommended. Here are my top 3 naturopath approved foundational fertility supplements to get you started on the right path.
1) High Quality Prenatal Vitamin
Ensure that your prenatal vitamin has a minimum of 800mcg of folic acid. Folic acid not only prevents neural tube defects, but also improves reproductive success through its role in DNA synthesis which is crucial during periods of rapid cell division in the preconception period (1).
If you are preparing for an IVF cycle, ensuring that you are getting a minimum of 800mcg of folic acid per day is especially important, as higher folic acid intake has been shown to improve fertilization rates, lower cycle failure, and improve live birth rates (2).
2) Vitamin D
This sunshine vitamin is involved in many processes that impact fertility success including the steroidogenesis of sex hormones (3), follicular development (4), and possibly endometrial receptivity (5).
Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with many reproductive pathologies including PCOS (6), endometriosis (7), and recurrent pregnancy loss (8) (9).
Replete vitamin D can improve menstrual regularity in women with PCOS (10), and has been shown to improve chemical pregnancy and live birth rates in women undergoing IVF (11) (12).
A minimum of 2000 IU of vitamin D is often recommended in the preconception period, however higher levels may be recommended if you are deficient. I highly advise testing vitamin D levels, to ensure appropriate dosing and optimization of serum levels.
3) Omega 3
This essential fatty acid is derived from fish and has two active components eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). It is thought to improve reproductive success through its involvement in steroidogenesis of sex hormones and ovulatory function (13) (14), improving blood flow to the uterus (15), improving the endometrial immune environment (16), and improving egg and embryo quality through feeding into mitochondrial energy production (17).
In fact, omega 3 supplementation has been shown to improve time to conception in couples trying to conceive naturally (18), and a high dietary intake of omega 3 as well as high serum omega 3 levels have been shown to improve IVF outcomes including embryo quality, clinical pregnancy rates and live birth rates (19) (20).
If you would like to learn more about fertility specific supplementation, please book in with a naturopathic doctor at Juniper Family Health. Additional supplementation may be recommended depending on your age, risk factors, and baseline laboratory assessment.
In health and happiness,
Dr. Meghan van Drimmelen, ND | Naturopath Victoria BC
References:
1) Dietary Folate and Reproductive Success Among Women Undergoing Assisted Reproduction
2) Dietary Folate and Reproductive Success Among Women Undergoing Assisted Reproduction
3) Mechanism in Endocrinology: Vitamin D and Fertility: A Systematic Review
4) Role of vitamin D in ovarian physiology and its implication in reproduction: a systematic review
5) Mechanism in Endocrinology: Vitamin D and Fertility: A Systematic Review
6) Serum Vitamin D Levels and Polycystic Ovary syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
9) Recurrent pregnancy loss and vitamin D: A review of the literature
11) Vitamin D and assisted reproductive treatment outcome: a systematic review and meta-analysis
13) Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Ovulatory Function
16) Beneficial Effects of Omega 3 Fatty Acids on Immune and Endometrial Reproductive Function
18) Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation and fecundability
20) Serum omega-3 fatty acids and treatment outcomes among women undergoing assisted reproduction