If you’re trying to conceive a baby, it can be crushing when you keep trying without success. Not being able to conceive can be a very painful and emotional experience.

Infertility is a problem that affects one out of every six couples. One-third of the time, it’s the man who has an infertility issue, but 66% of the time it’s the woman.

In this blog, I’m going to cover 8 solutions that will help boost fertility for both men and women.

Infertility In Men

One of the primary causes of infertility in men is lack of libido. Some men can get stuck in a work or stress mode.

There are also those affected by E.D. (Erectile Dysfunction), performance issues, motility, testosterone levels, and sperm counts.

There are a lot of things that drive these factors. Some of the causes of infertility in men include:

• Obesity
• Alcohol
• Smoking
• Age
• Autoimmune Conditions
• Hormone Imbalances

Infertility In Women

With women, problems occur when there’s an issue with ovulation or fertilization. Releasing the egg, fertilizing the egg, or implanting the egg—there’s a problem with at least one of those three steps.

Some of the main drivers of infertility in women include:

• Hormone imbalances
• Age
• Smoking
• Alcohol
• Obesity
• Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
• Endometriosis
• Scarring of Tubes
• STDs

A major cause of hormone imbalances in women is birth control. You might be taking it to control your menstrual cycle, but that’s damaging your reproductive machine.

There are a lot of people who jump off of birth control and try to conceive, but there can be a lot of negative side effects and hormone imbalances from that. Your system isn’t primed to produce what it’s designed to produce.

1. Drugs

Specific drugs can actually affect fertility. Studies show that antidepressants cause fertility issues in both men and women.

Calcium channel blockers, often used to treat high blood pressure, can affect fertility, especially in men.

Chemotherapy will obviously affect the performance of reproductive organs.

Steroids can throw off the estrogen-testosterone balance. Marijuana and cocaine have that effect as well.

If you’re taking prescription medication and are experiencing infertility issues, read through the medication’s side effects. There should be a section on reproductive organs, so check if it impacts you.

2. Stress

Several studies show that women’s libido significantly decreases with stress and depression.

One of my favorite herbs for this is ashwagandha, which controls stress levels. This can be found in my De-Stress supplement, which you can find here.

Ashwagandha increases libido by lowering cortisol, and it increases men’s sperm count by 167%.

I would also highly recommend my breathing techniques that I teach in the Livingood Daily Lifestyle Challenges. They can be done in a couple of minutes and help control stress levels.

3. Hormones

One of the main things to look at when it comes to reproductive problems is excess weight.

The driving force behind excess weight is insulin. Insulin is the bully on the playground that dictates all the other hormones.

Having too much insulin creates fat, and then fat creates estrogen. If estrogen is out of balance, it will cause fertility issues.

Women, if you have too little or too much estrogen, that causes fertility issues.

Men, if you have too much estrogen, that’s going to lower your testosterone levels, which will cause performance issues.

The more you can get your body into shape through exercise, fasting, and proper nutrition, the more your body can utilize insulin.

High-intensity exercise for men can increase testosterone by up to 700%.

Food like trans fats, bad oils, and sugar are going to drive up insulin. Try to stay away from rancid oils like peanut, canola, soybean, cotton, and vegetable oils.

These all throw off hormones, increase fat, toxify the cells, and ultimately contribute to infertility.

One more food that should be avoided when it comes to nutrition, especially for men, is soy. Soy is high in natural estrogen, and can decrease sperm quality.

4. Timing

In order to optimize fertility, you want to pay attention to the woman’s cycle. The egg is only good for about 24 hours.

However, sperm is good for about 5 or 6 days. So there is a 5-day window for a couple to conceive during a 28-30 day period of time, and figuring out when that window is is very important.

One way you can track this is through temperature.

There are also a lot of apparatuses and tools nowadays that can help you track when the best time to conceive is to raise your chances of success.

5. Herbal Teas

Herbal teas, especially green tea, reduce oxidative stress. Mental stress turns into oxidative stress, so lowering mental stress helps you.

Reducing oxidative stress greatly helps with women’s fertility. For men, green tea helps with the concentration and motility of sperm.

6. Maca Root

Maca root helps support healthy female hormones and increases sperm quality.

You can take maca root in capsule form, or you can break them open and use the powder form in your smoothies.

Maca root’s hormone and metabolism support is going to help optimize insulin, which as we discussed earlier, helps with fertility.

7. Vitamin D

18 studies found that high vitamin D levels correlated with increased fertility. My suspicion for why is because vitamin D is the precursor to all of the hormones in your body.

I recommend ensuring that your vitamin D levels are above 50.

8. Omega-3

There is a prominent study that shows omega-3 protects a female’s reproductive lifespan, as well as her egg quality.

If you’re on birth control, you’re going to want to take omega-3 to lower inflammation and protect your egg quality.

Make sure you take a high quality omega-3, which my Omegas + Turmeric supplement would be perfect for. It has a high concentration of omega-3s.

Studies also show significant improvements in the likelihood of conceiving for men that do take omega-3.

Summary

You can try implementing all of these things not only to improve your fertility, but to create a healthy lifestyle.

If you want more info on how to start living a healthy lifestyle, check out the Livingood Daily book for free here.

It breaks down information about fasting, nutrition, fats, and is a very good resource to help you get started on your health journey.