Pregnancy is a beautiful season that begins long before conception and lasts up to 12 weeks after delivery. However, it can also come with its stresses. When ensuring a healthy pregnancy, it is important to address the foundational needs of the body through proper minerals, nutrition, and overall health. This blog will explore our functional medicine approach to critical nutritional and health components practiced among many moms we work with who are preparing for pregnancy.
Preparing for Preconception: Nutrient Optimization
Optimizing your fertility starts with ensuring that you are laying a solid foundation. At Infinite Wellness, we like to ensure that your foundation is strong from a cellular perspective. We want to help you ensure that your cells have all the nutrients needed to move through processes as seamlessly as possible. Observational studies show strong links between health before pregnancy and maternal and child health outcomes, with consequences that can extend across generations, but awareness of these links is not widespread (1). Let’s walk through why all of this is important!
When you optimize nutrient reserves before conception, you build up key minerals like folate, iron, magnesium, and zinc, which are all vital for reproductive health.
Folate is a critical nutrient for preconception health because it is essential for DNA synthesis and repair, making it vital for cell division and growth. Many people know folate to play a role in preventing neural tube defects. You can receive folate naturally through leafy greens, legumes, and citrus fruits.
Iron is essential for forming hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood. A woman’s blood volume during pregnancy increases significantly, which increases the demand for iron. Understanding if you have optimal iron levels before conception helps to replenish you if you have been told you have anemia, are fatigued, or have a poor immune system. You can receive iron naturally through red meat, poultry, fish, lentils, and spinach. Pairing iron-rich foods with vitamin C is important to enhance iron absorption.
Most people are familiar with magnesium. It is needed for over 300 different enzymatic reactions in the body, especially those involved in muscle and nerve function, blood sugar control, and protein synthesis. This mineral helps to regulate blood pressure, which is crucial in pregnancy. Foods rich in magnesium include nuts, seeds, and leafy green vegetables.
In our practice, we talk a lot about zinc because it is critical for immune function, cell growth, and DNA synthesis. Adequate zinc levels are also needed for egg and sperm development. Zinc-rich foods include oysters, red meat, poultry, beans, and nuts. Zinc is also necessary for healthy menstrual cycles.
Preparing for Preconception: Balancing Hormones
Now that you know how to lay the groundwork for optimal vitamins and minerals, ensuring that your partner’s hormones are optimal for fertility is important.
The endocrine system helps to produce and regulate hormones; it is important to ensure that this system functions optimally. At Infinite Wellness, we take a holistic approach to fertility to ensure that both partners are optimal during this preconception journey. Nutrients like vitamin D, omega-3- 3 fatty acids, and B vitamins help us replenish our missing deficiencies.
Vitamin D is specifically essential for reproductive health in both men and women. It is critical in regulating menstrual cycles and supporting ovarian function (2). Research shows adequate vitamin D levels are associated with improved fertility outcomes (3). In men, vitamin D is important for sperm quality and testosterone production. The truth is that many people are deficient in vitamin D because of limited sunlight exposure. It is important to have your levels tested, and you can also add foods like fatty fish and egg yolks to help increase vitamin D; however, sunlight exposure has been proven to be the most beneficial.
Omega-3 fatty acids, especially EPA and DHA, are essential for hormone production and balance. These fatty acids help reduce inflammation in the body that would otherwise interfere with hormone function and fertility (4). Omega-3 helps regulate the menstrual cycle and promote ovulation in women. For men, they are important for sperm health, including motility and morphology (4). Supplementation with omega-3s is common, but the best dietary sources are flaxseeds, chia seeds, and walnuts.
The B vitamin family is vital for hormonal health and fertility. B6 is essential for maintaining and balancing progesterone levels in the body, which is especially helpful in the early parts of pregnancy during the second half of the menstrual cycle. Vitamin B12 works with folate to support DNA synthesis and red blood cell formation. Good sources of B vitamins include eggs, leafy green vegetables, and lean meats.
Understanding the nutrients that help support healthy preconception is important. However, even more deeply functional medicine takes a root-cause approach to hormonal health. At Infinite Wellness, we help individuals recognize that their imbalances stem from deeper concerns within the body. Addressing thyroid dysfunction and adrenal fatigue is important, as they can affect fertility. Ensuring that you have optimal levels within these systems will allow for greater fertility outcomes.
Preparing for Preconception: Gut Health
As you think about nutrient absorption in preparing for fertility, it is important to acknowledge the health of your microbiome. Foundationally, a microbiome filled with imbalances and overgrowth will not allow you to absorb the nutrients you are eating. Let’s break this down in more detail.
The gut microbiome is a diverse community of trillions of microorganisms that live in the digestive tract. A healthy microbiome supports efficient nutrient absorption, which is important to ensure the body has access to all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients needed for fertility and pregnancy. Because of its role in providing nutrients and minerals to our body, it is also linked to the immune system, which helps protect against harmful pathogens while promoting the balance of beneficial microbes. As you might imagine, immune regulation is essential during pregnancy because the immune system must adapt to accommodate the growing fetus. If imbalances within the microbiome, it can lead to a leaky gut, impairing fertility.
In working with women to prepare them for conception, explaining this relationship is often confusing as many just consider the endocrine system as the other piece to focus on in conceiving. However, the gut and hormones are closely connected through the gut-brain axis, a bidirectional communication pathway between the gut and the brain. The gut microbiome influences the production and regulation of hormones—especially estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. A healthy microbiome balance supports hormonal balance in aiding the metabolism of excess hormones that can lead to imbalances and affect ovulation and overall fertility.
A healthy gut supports overall well-being and will enhance fertility by ensuring that the body is in an optimal state to conceive. It is one of the most overlooked aspects when considering preparation; however, it allows for better pregnancy outcomes and better health postpartum. At Infinite Wellness, we can help you run specific gut health testing to understand your imbalances and deficiencies.
Putting it All Together
A healthy pregnancy requires attention to foundational health needs, including minerals, hormone balance, and optimal gut health. During the preconception phase, considering approaches that help you discover any root cause imbalances through functional medicine observation will ensure that personalized care addresses all of the unique concerns relevant to you. Receiving a protocol that best fits you will encourage you to take on this season and make you more resilient. You’ll know exactly the roadmap to follow to help you and finally be able to block out all of the noise. If you would like to speak to one of our providers to help support you in your preconception journey, please schedule a free consultation!
Resources:
- Stephenson, Judith, et al. “Before the beginning: nutrition and lifestyle in the preconception period and its importance for future health.” The Lancet 391.10132 (2018): 1830-1841.
- Nandi, Anindita, et al. “Is there a role for vitamin D in human reproduction?.” Hormone molecular biology and clinical investigation 25.1 (2016): 15-28.
- Wagner, Carol L., et al. “Vitamin D and its role during pregnancy in attaining optimal health of mother and fetus.” Nutrients 4.3 (2012): 208-230.
- Hammiche, Fatima, et al. “Increased preconception omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake improves embryo morphology.” Fertility and sterility 95.5 (2011): 1820-1823.