The Fertility Diet

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For many couples struggling with infertility, the best hope for having a baby often comes from expensive high-tech medical procedures coupled with sometimes unpleasant drugs. Now there's a safer, natural, and virtually free way to improve fertility that's available to all couples: ten simple changes in diet and lifestyle. In The Fertility Diet, Harvard researchers Jorge E. Chavarro, MD, and Walter C. Willett, MD, along with writer Patrick J. Skerrett, offer a plan that: improves ovulation and fertility offers a healthy start to a pregnancy is good for the heart, bones, and the rest of the body throughout pregnancy and beyond There are several fertility how-to books on the market and heaps of often conflicting advice on the Internet. These are scattershot approaches based on little more than wishful thinking. The Fertility Diet stands apart. It is based on solid scientific data — an eight-year study of more than 18,000 women that is part of the landmark Nurses' Health Study.

Key recommendations from The Fertility Diet include:

• Avoiding trans-fats, the artery-clogging fats found in many commercial products and fast foods
• Eating more vegetable protein, like beans and nuts, and less animal protein
• Drinking a glass of whole milk or having a small dish of ice cream or full-fat yogurt every day; temporarily trading in skim milk and low or no-fat dairy products for their full-fat versions
• Getting into the "fertility zones" for weight and physical activity

This advice isn't just for couples seeking an alternative to IVF, GIFT, ICSI, and the rest of the alphabet soup of assisted reproduction technologies. It can be used by any woman who is trying to get pregnant. There's even some advice on diet and lifestyle for men trying to become fathers. The Fertility Diet can work on its own or help turbocharge assisted reproduction technologies.

Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro, a native of Bogotá, Colombia, has taken a lead role in the fertility component of the ongoing Nurses' Health Study. Dr. Walter C. Willett, who chairs the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, is one of the most influential nutrition researchers in the world. His book, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: A Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, summarizes and simplifies what's known today about healthy diets. With veteran medical writer Patrick J. Skerrett, Drs. Chavarro and Willett have translated mountains of data into clear, straightforward recommendations about diet and exercise that will help women get pregnant, serve them well as they carry a new life, and help keep them healthy into middle age and beyond.

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