There are many fertility treatments to choose from, but which one you should choose? The answer is closely dependent on the cause of your fertility problem. Along with your treatments, your doctor may also recommend some fertility enhancers with home remedies (or changes in lifestyle) to increase the success rate of your treatment.
The advance treatments with modern intervention (such as IVF or In-Vitro Fertilization) are expensive. For this reason, you may consider taking fertility herbs -- but beware, not all these herbs are effective and safe. Therefore, before taking any fertility supplement or herb, it is much better to discuss first with your doctor or midwife to keep safe!
Some lifestyle changes to boost the fertility either for men or women may include; avoiding stress, weight control, eating healthy foods, etc. Furthermore for women, it is very important to get to know when their ovulation days occur. What else you need to know? Below are some facts and pieces of helpful information about fertility enhancers.
Control and manage your stress!
Tying to get pregnant can put you at higher chance of having more stress, especially if you have been waiting a long time for your pregnancy but there is still no positive result. On the other hand, stress is not good for your health and your chance of becoming pregnant.
Many experts believe that stress can influence certain hormones in the body which then may contribute to reduce the chance of becoming pregnant! Women who are undergoing fertility treatments and at the same time they can manage their stress as well will have high success rate of becoming pregnant -- according to some studies from the Harvard’s Mind-Body Institute.
Furthermore, stress also can affect the cycles of women’s menstruation. Women with excessively stress tend to have more irregular periods in extremely duration.
There are many ways that you can explore to manage or reduce your stress, some of them are:
- Getting a regular exercise. Yoga is one of good choices to help to you control your stress!
- You can also do some simple things to reduce your stress, such as holding hands with your partner, breathing more fresh air, listening your favorite music, etc!
- Some people have perception that drinking alcohol and smoking can help them to reduce their stress! But these ideas are bad choice. On the other hand, there are many studies found that smoking can contribute in causing female fertility problems in men and women. Even drinking alcohol excessively and cigarette smoking can impair certain fertility treatments!
Keep your healthy weight!
Some studies found that there may be correlation between unhealthy weight (both overweight and underweight) and fertility.
Women who are overweight have higher chance of experiencing ovulation disorder -- according to a recent Dutch study. And being too underweight is also bad. Women are being too thin have lower chance of getting pregnant than others who have healthy weight.
In men, unhealthy weight also can affect the fertility -- though the effect may be not as significant as in women!
Watch what you eat!
In female fertility problems, one of common causes is ovulation disorder. This is a serious problem. As the name suggests -- women with ovulation dysfunction have problems associated to mechanism of their ovulation.
Moreover, women who have ovulation disorder also have higher chance of experiencing undiagnosed subclinical polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS, another health problem that also can affect the mechanism of the ovulation!
A study from Harvard School of Public Heath found that some certain healthy foods can increase the chance of conception odds. And below are helpful checklists of foods that you should eat according to this study:
- As well we know that protein is the essential nutrient for the body. And if you seriously want to improve your conception odds, red meat or other animal proteins should be restricted. It is much better to choose soy or other vegetable proteins.
- Consuming high-fat dairy products are acceptable as long as you consume them moderately.
- Foods that are high in trans-fat also must be avoided! It’s much better to choose mono-unsaturated fats instead of trans-fat foods.
- And don’t forget to the fiber. We all agree that fiber is essential nutrient for the health. Therefore, make sure you get adequate fiber a day from foods that you eat. Reduce also the amount of your sugars and carbohydrates intake!
These dietary tenets are also recommended for men fertility enhancer.
Get to know the days of ovulation!
The chance of fertilization is high when you and your partner do the intercourse in the days of ovulation (days when the eggs are released for fertilization). Therefore, it is so important to get to know the ovulation days -- timing is so crucial to increase the chance of getting a pregnancy.
For women, the big question is how to get to know when they are in their ovulation days?! There are some options to approximate the ovulation days.
- With an ovulation predictor kit (OPK) or ovulation checker or fertility monitor! This tool is designed to predict when the best time you have to get intercourse. For women with a history of cervical issue, there is also now available ovulation kit with a small latex-free cervical cap.
- Keep records the chart of your BBT (basal body temperature) for one or two months! The elevated BBT can be used for the indication of your ovulation days. Having charts of your BBT for one or two months can help you to analyze the fluctuation of your BBT, which then help you to get to know your ovulation days. BBT usually drops a half degree in the just prior before ovulation, and then it rises again after ovulation.
- Another sign of your ovulation days is from the characteristics of your cervical mucus. The cervical mucus during ovulation days is usually clearer, thinner, and more copious than on other regular days.
- You can also use an online ovulation calculator that you can find easily on internet. Just type a keyword “ovulation calculator’ on Google or Bing and then you will find a lot of choices of ovulation calculator!
Fertility acupuncture
If you are looking for natural ways to boost your fertility, fertility acupuncture may be helpful to solve your problem. The combination of fertility acupuncture and getting right exercise (like yoga) will be helpful to reduce your stress and other health issues which then may improve your fertility.
Unfortunately, there is still no adequate scientifically evidence to confirm the effectiveness acupuncture for fertility problems. More research is needed for clearly answer!
Read also related article about how to choose a fertility clinic?
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