Continuing from my last post about fertility, I noticed is some of the newspapers last week stories about is Jennifer Aniston, at the age of 39, is having acupuncture treatment to help her conceive. It is good to see that the positive effects of acupuncture on fertility is getting more positive publicity and letting the population as a whole know about this safe and effective treatment.
In this post I want to look at some of the issues that are affecting people’s ability to conceive other than the organic medical issues. I will save discussing conditions such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome for a later post.
The classic texts of Traditional Chinese Medicine (some of them over 3000 years old) talk about the importance of preparing for conception, and to allow a good 6 months to get as healthy as possible before trying to conceive. If you were going to plant a prize winning garden you would spend some time preparing the soil and buying the best quality seeds you could find. It takes approximately 150 days for the ovum to mature, so what you do and eat during this time will have a profound effect on the quality of the egg and the sperm. As the old computer saying goes: “garbage in, garbage out!”
Regardless of what condition you have, whether it relates to fertility issues or not, it is important to get the fundamentals right. The 4 cornerstones to good health are: diet, exercise, rest and relaxation. If you get these 4 areas right, you will notice a significant improvement in your health, and if you are trying to conceive it is even more important to get these 4 areas under control.
There has been so much written on diet, much of the advice conflicting. At our clinic we find keeping that simple works best; eat only fresh foods that look the way that nature intended them to look! In other words, start each meal from fresh; vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, poultry, a little red meat now and again, if you like, a little dairy, and plenty of fresh water. If you avoid foods that come out of a packet, you will not go far wrong. Obviously we can tailor the diet to be a little more specific, but just following this advice will get you a long way towards being healthier.
Exercise does not have to be that complicated, you don’t need to join a gym, or spend hundreds of pounds on equipment. If you are not doing very much physical activity at the moment, get yourself a decent pedometer (there’s a wide range at amazon.co.uk, and your local sports shop is almost certain to stock them), and make sure that you do a minimum of 10,000 steps every day. (Just wearing one all day can be very revealing, I had a client who was convinced that she did plenty of exercise, and when she first put on her pedometer she discovered that she managed a massive 350 steps a day!!)
Traditional Chinese medicine texts consider regular and sufficient rest one of the key items for a long and healthy life. They also emphasise the importance of regularity, that is, going to bed at the same time every night. There has been so much research on the importance of sleep for good health, and all of the papers that I have seen have shown that the average person needs between 7½ and 8½ hours of sleep a night. That’s every night, you can’t catch up on the weekend!.
Last, but certainly not least is deep relaxation. Relaxation is not the same as sleeping, have you ever gone to bed stressed, slept 7 or 8 hours, and woken feeling stressed? Deep relaxation involves relaxation of both the physical body and the mind. One of simplest, and most effective, techniques is to lie on the floor, and start by focusing on the breath. Then starting with the head, with each out -breath imagine the tension releasing from the muscles in the head, then the neck, shoulders, and so on, all the way down to the feet. The process should take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Do this every day and within a week or two you will be astonished how different you feel.
At our clinic we also get our clients to use specially recorded binaural cds, which have an almost miraculous effect on stress. I’ll give more details about this next time – you’ll have to keep reading my blog!
In my next post I’ll write about the supplements you should be thinking of taking, whether trying to conceive, or just trying to improve your health. I’ll also write a little about the Traditional Chinese medicine approach to diet.
Until the next time
Stay Healthy
Keith Ferris
