5 Foods To Eat To Boost Your Fertility

Jamie Grifo, MD, one of the leading fertility doctors in the country, teamed up with Kyra Phillips, a CNN correspondent and former fertility patient, to co-author The Whole Life Fertility Plan: Understanding What Affects Your Fertility To Help You Get Pregnant. In this excerpt from the new paperback edition, the authors explain what you need to know about eating for your fertility.

Digestion and nutrition play a key role in just about every aspect of our health, including fertility. What you eat and drink affect the way your body works for better or worse — so let's make sure you understand how to properly nourish yourself.

Iron is an important nutrient to aid fertility, and the easiest way to get iron in your diet is through meat — but it should be lean meat. Choose lean cuts and eat about 3 oz. per day3; trim the fat; and bake, grill, or broil instead of frying.

Salmon, sardines, herring, and other types of fatty fish boost fertility, thanks to their high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which increase blood flow to the reproductive organs.

Fiber is another tool to flush out excess estrogen4, says Ross. Fiber adds bulk to your digestion and helps you feel full. It also helps prevent constipation, which keeps things “moving right along.” When you have a diet with inadequate fiber, you can slow down your digestive system, and the estrogen that’s sitting in your bowel waiting to make its exit can get bored waiting and get reabsorbed into your system, causing a buildup of too much estrogen.

Pay attention to ingredient labels: you want to aim for about 25 grams a day (that’s the recommended daily intake level for women; men should get 38 grams), whereas most American women get about half that amount per day.

If you have a sensitive stomach, you may want to limit your intake of dairy, which is hard for many people to digest even without a clinical lactose intolerance. But Ross makes an exception for yogurt because it contains probiotics — which have the opposite effect. Probiotics are great for your gut, and like fiber, they can help your digestive system work better and improve your immune function, which improves your fertility as well. There are also a ton of dairy free yogurt options that have the same benefits.

You can take a daily probiotic supplement available at drug stores, or you can get probiotics from your diet. Good sources, aside from yogurt, include kefir, sauerkraut, and miso.