As I walked from the elevator at my usual 7:00 am, I glanced through the waiting room and something caught my eye: a pregnant woman on the cover of Newsweek captioned by “Fertility and Diet.” “ Oh no,” I said to myself. “Here come about at million questions!” So I figured I would read the article and take the time here to go through some things; beat you to the punch.

According to the article, diet the recommendations are aimed at preventing and reversing “ovulatory infertility.” This goes back to my blogs on PCOS. Therefore if you already ovulate regularly, the diet issue does not apply to you.

It appears that women with better diets had more regular ovulation. Brilliant. Lets start with carbs. The article shows that carbs are fine, but women who ate more “healthy carbs”, such as brown rice, pasta and dark bread, whole grains, beans and vegetables, and whole fruit, ovulated more than those who loaded up on white rice and potatoes. Sounds familiar. For any medical well-being issue, the message is the same.

Trans fats can make you fat. Brilliant. A diet higher in trans fats usually means the diet is lower in the good things mentioned above. This concept can also be applied when examining that plant protein may be better that animal protein.

The milk and cream issue requires a little more analysis. There are 2 types of women who do not ovulate: those that are starving themselves, and those who are eating a bit more that they should. The article does not always make the distinction clear. The point is that if a woman in not eating, milk and ice cream will help her ovulate. Increasing caloric intake, through whatever means necessary, can jump start ovulation. However, if someone is overeating to start with, milk and ice cream may not make a difference, unless she starts to substitute some of the bad food with yogurt and cottage cheese, which will lead to weight loss.

Exercise is good. Brilliant.

To be perfectly clear, I agree with everything they say. Proper diet is a good thing. Potential pitfalls here are that women may feel that by taking an extra hit of salmon per week will feel they can lick their fertility problems, and not get the help they need until they are older. If you are not getting pregnant, eat well and see the fertility doctor. If you are 32, overweight and don’t ovulate much, it’s ok to get on a program, lose weight over 6 months, start to ovulate, and avoid Mr. M.D. If you are 38, ovulate regularly and decide to modify your diet for 6 moths before seeing the doctor, I think you may lose too much valuable time. Do both.

In addition there are reasons for non-ovulation (we call it anovulation) other than those related to weight and diet. Problems with the thyroid, pituitary and adrenal glands can also contribute. Therefore, if you are not ovulating, you are better served by a basic simple workup. If everything is ok, at least you know, and then you can make a decision on how to proceed.

Admittedly, I am jealous that some researchers reported on things we already knew, published a book, and got on the cover of Newsweek. Brilliant! But I am happy that by reinforcing some basic principals people can be healthier, and some more women will get pregnant. We all have experienced that some people process a message better when it comes from the press as opposed to from their doctor, spouse, mother ect.

As usual, see the disclaimer blog.

Thank you,

Dr. Licciardi