The Fertility Diet

Solid Scientific Ground

Since then, more than 116,000 dedicated volunteers have completed detailed surveys every other year. Over the course of the study, 18,555 women said at one time or another that they were trying to get pregnant. Although most eventually did, more than 3,400 of these women had difficulty getting pregnant, including hundreds who experienced ovulatory infertility.

From the mountains of data supplied by these women, Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro has been exploring possible connections between diet and ovulatory infertility, the most common single cause of infertility among American women, among the participants of the Nurses' Health Study. With Dr. Willett and other key colleagues, including Janet Rich-Edwards and Bernard A. Rosner, both of the Harvard School of Public Health, he has identified several factors that promote ovulatory infertility and protect against it. Their work has been published in top-tier medical journals, including Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and Fertility and Sterility. To get this information to the people who need it the most — women who are trying to get pregnant — they worked with Patrick J. Skerrett, a veteran medical writer, to summarize the results of this ground-breaking study and show women how they can apply the findings to their everyday lives.

About the Authors

Dr. Walter C. Willett is chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is among the top five most cited scientists in the world. Click here to download a one-page biography with photo.

Patrick J. Skerrett is editor of the Harvard Heart Letter and co-author, with Dr. Willett, of Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating.

For more information

The Fertility Diet, published by McGraw-Hill, is available in most bookstores and from online booksellers such as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.