In this infographic, developed by Term Life Insurance, you’ll see a few of the many health issues that soda plays a large role in. Heart disease, obesity, osteoporosis, reproductive issues…the list goes on and on. I’m sure you’ve heard these warnings before, but have you really thought about what that can of Coke is doing to your insides? By consuming soda on a regular basis you’re basically asking to be miserable and sick.
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Like so many women, Jan found herself in her thirties with a career, a husband, and a strong desire to get pregnant. At 33, this corporate attorney had already had one miscarriage and two unsuccessful IUIs (intrauterine insemination), and she was “very upset and unsettled,” as described in Aimee Raupp’s new book Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: The Diet That Will Improve Your Fertility Now and Into Your 40s.

Jan is a real-life client of Aimee’s, a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, and author of Chill Out and Get Healthy, who is included as a case study in this new book. Jan is described as arriving at Aimee’s office with a diet iced tea and a story of “fertility reducing eating habits,” a nutritionally void diet of low-fat, sugar-free, processed foods. Jen is probably not unlike a lot of women visiting Aimee or fertility specialists across the country; in fact, she’s probably more like the average infertility patient than not.

Where Jan may take a left fork in the road is in the diet she now follows, as prescribed by Aimee and outlined in the Yes, You Can Get Pregnant book. Today, Aimee excitedly told me that Jan is pregnant, and she did it naturally without the invasive IVF she was prepared to do. Aimee explained that Jan cleaned up her diet, took liver pills, and did eight acupuncture treatments. Then, after two menstrual cycles, learned she was expecting.

So is another of Aimee’s clients, a 43-year-old woman pregnant with her second child. “She followed my diet to a T, better than I do sometimes,” said Aimee. “She’s 20 weeks pregnant with a clean amnio.”

So what is Aimee prescribing that’s helping these women achieve the pregnancies they so desire? Just like Jan and the 43-year-old mom, they’re laser focused on what they eat as much as what they don’t.
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A diet high in monounsaturated fat has been found to increase fertility in women trying to get pregnant trough IVF treatments, finds a new study.

The results of this study were presented at the annual meeting of ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology) by Dr Jorge Chavarro, Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, USA.

“Different types of fat are known to have different effects on biological processes which may influence the outcome of assisted reproduction – such as underlying levels of inflammation or insulin sensitivity. However, it is not clear at this moment which biological mechanisms underlie the associations we found,” said Chavarro in the press release.

The study took place among 147 women having IVF at the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. According to the press release, they had preclinical assessments including oocyte development. They were also categorized into tertiles of fat intake, with outcomes compared in relation to the lowest tertile. Results were controlled for other sources of energy, infertility diagnosis, ovarian stimulation protocol, body mass index (BMI) and smoking status.

The study also found that women who ate polyunsaturated fat or the “bad fat” had more poor quality embryos. The connection of a diet high in saturated fat and lower sperm count has already been discovered.
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If you are frequently forgetting to taking oral contraceptives at the same time every day, you are increasing the chances of becoming pregnant. If you don’t want to switch to another form of birth control are there any foods that might help or hurt your contraceptive chances?

I spoke with our resident expert on all things food-related, Mary Hartley, RD, and this is what she told me. “Foods that are high in isoflavones have been called ‘natural contraceptives.’”

Isoflavones are plant-based estrogen-like compounds that could, in theory, create hormonal imbalances that affect ovulation and interact with birth control. Genistein, the most potent isoflavone, is found in legumes, and so soy foods, peas, peanuts, chick peas, and fava beans have been thought to influence fertility. Wild yams (not to be confused with sweet potato yams) contain the isoflavone, diosgenin, but it has a very weak effect compared to the body’s own reproductive hormones. At this point, the potential health benefits and risks of the various isoflavones are under investigation, but there is no current data to suggest that normal intakes are likely to cause hormonal imbalances.
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Women who partake in activities that involve repeated jarring or bouncing such as running, tennis, or high-impact aerobics may be putting themselves at risk for worsened symptoms of pre menstrual syndrome, or even infertility. When a woman’s body experiences whiplash or sudden jerking, the uterus can swing out of alignment. While often unnoticed or overlooked, this misalignment may just be the cause of female woes and discomforts. Thankfully, there is a technique that offers a natural and holistic remedy to assist in a variety of gynecological issues in women.

In the early 1990s, Brazilian native Dr. Rosita Arvigo developed the Arvigo Technique of Maya Abdominal Therapy. After ten years of apprenticing with Don Elijio Panti, an internationally acclaimed Mayan healer and shaman, Arvigo created her unique style of healing massage to readjust the position of the uterus and relax other abdominal organs.

Arvigo’s late mentor and teacher used to say, “If a woman’s uterus is out of balance, so is she.” Arvigo took these words of wisdom and added them to her decades of training in holistic modalities, and founded a system that has helped women all over the world.
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