Your Gut Health and Fertility

When preparing for conception how you nourish your mind, body and heart matters. Nourish is one of my pillars of Fertility Wellbeing and what I love about it is, it’s an easy place to make some changes that will positively impact on your fertility journey.

The connection between gut health and fertility.

This week in my private community we had the lovely Deborah Brock from Nua Fertility join us for a chat about the links between gut health and Fertility.

Considering the gut health and more importantly the microbiome hasn’t always been an obvious place to consider when preparing your body for conception. But the growing evidence strongly links gut health to your fertility health.

With the gut being home to 2kg of microbes and the surface area of the GI tract being the same size as 2 tennis courts is it any wonder that this would impact on your fertility health.

So what is the microbiome?

Your body is home to trillions of microscopic organisms- bacteria, fungi, viruses and microbes. This ecosystem of micro-organisms is what’s known as the microbiome.

These friendly bugs do lots, they digest our food, absorb nutrients, support your immune system, protect your intestines and remove harmful environmental toxins for our body, produce B vitamins and generate vitamin K. So basically we couldn’t function without them.

We do although have small amount of “bad” bacteria, we can’t get rid of them but we need to keep a good balance between the good and the bad guys.

The signs of poor gut health

Upset stomach,

Unintentional weight changes

Sleep disturbance or constant fatigue

Skin irritations

Autoimmune conditions

Food intolerances.

What can impact on your gut health?

Eating processed foods

Drink Alcohol or taking drugs

Chronic Stress

Medication, especially antibiotics.

Environmental toxins.

How does a healthy microbiome support your fertility?

Improves the absorption of nutrients, if you are eating well you want to know your body is able to get the most out of it.

70% of the bodies serotonin (happy chemical) is produced in the gut. Serotonin allows us to convert food into energy. When you are preparing your body to conceive and grow a whole new person, your body needs to be able to produce energy.

A healthy microbiome helps to regulate hormone production. If your hormones are out of balance it’s safe to assume so is your microbiome. When it comes to your fertility your hormones need to be balanced.

When the microbiome is not healthy it can cause inflammation, this can cause leaky gut syndrome, meaning that the toxins that should be eliminated from the body, leak into the bloodstream, causing an immune response in the body. When our immune system is on high alert it will attack anything “foreign” this can be sperm or an embryo.

The role of our immune system is vital when preparing for conception. When the immune system is not working properly we can enter a state of chronic inflammation which may impact on decreased progesterone levels, which can cause implantation failure or pregnancy loss.

What can you do to support a healthy microbiome?

Nutrition is your first port of call. Eat a balanced diet, eat the rainbow! Our diets should be full of biodiversity.

Lifestyle factors, reduce your stress where possible, invest in sleep.

Reflexology is wonderful for supporting gut health and fertility.

Take a good pre and probiotic. I recommend all of my clients take the NuaBiome female supplements, to support coming off hormonal contraceptives and to prepare for conception.

If you want to learn more about how you can Nourish your whole self as you prepare for conception, I am happy to share that supper club is back! Myself and the lovely Cara Redpath (Nutritional Therapist) will guide you through our 6 week online programme to Nourish your Mind, Body and Heart on your fertility journey sign up here.

To order some NuaBiome Female supplement click here.