From Anovulation (absent ovulation) to a baby boy
by Sue Kira, Naturopath & Clinical Nutritionist
Client name and identifying information changed
One of the great joys of being a naturopath is to help ladies who are having difficulty conceiving.
Many ladies just don’t seem to ovulate often. Sometimes anovulation is due to PCOS (polycystic ovaries) but other times, they just don’t ovulate. There are various reasons, but it’s frequently due to diet and lifestyle factors such as excessive exercise, poor eating habits, stress, being overweight or underweight and a condition called hyperprolactinemia. Basically, the result is no ovulation and you can’t fall pregnant.
Josephine came to me after trying to fall pregnant for several months. It wasn’t until she thought about why it was taking so long to fall pregnant that she realised that she wasn’t ovulating every month. She was ovulating once every 3-4 months and sometimes after 6 months. This was stressful for her as her partner worked away and they would only get brief moments together when they could possibly conceive, which made things worse.
Bordering on considering IVF, they visited me to see what could be done. Josephine’s partner had been tested and was fine, so we crossed that off the list. Josephine had many tests and there didn’t appear to be any reason why she wasn’t ovulating.
I wanted to make sure they were both getting plenty of the right nutrients to make conception as likely as possible, so we started by making some changes to their diet.
Rather than starting with the usual oestrogen increasing diet, I felt it was more important to sort out their ordinary diet. There was much room for improvement and they both had stress in their life.
I looked at Josephine’s vitamin and mineral levels and tests showed that she was low in nearly all of those needed for healthy hormones, such as vitamin D, B6, zinc, iron and her B12 was sub-optimal. We set up a diet that was rich in these nutrients as well as cutting out foods and drinks with the potential to cause problems such as gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, coffee, additives, most grains and white rice (whole grain rice is ok in small amounts).
Josephine’s vitamin D was so low that I also started her on a vitamin D supplement and encouraged her to get out into the sun a bit more and we also included vitamin D rich foods in her diet.
Within three months Josephine started to ovulate every month. Another three months later she was finally pregnant. Several months later, Josephine gave birth to a lovely, bubbly baby boy.