Did you know that everything you're doing today is going to impact the quality of the eggs that
you are going to release in three months from now? The good news is you have time to start preparing
today to influence the eggs that you are going to ovulate in three months' time.
Three to four months before ovulation, an egg cell, or also what's called a follicle, begins
to grow in size and mature. That growing follicle needs nutrients and energy from its surrounding
environment to grow properly, stay healthy, and, potentially most importantly, be of good quality.
So by improving your diet and lifestyle in the three to four months leading up to ovulation of
that cycle, not ovulation now, ovulation then, you can dramatically impact the quality of the eggs
that you are going to be using on any given cycle. And hopefully impact the quality and how health
of the pregnancy that is going to ensue. This is so powerful of a concept. It means that
you directly have impact and influence over the eggs that you are going to be ovulating
and the health of the child that you're going to create. Amazing, right? Well,
that's exactly what I want to cover and talk about today in this episode of Fertility TV.
My name is Dr. Mark Sklar, also known as the Fertility Expert, and I've been working
with couples for over 19 years through my online coaching programs, Fertility TV,
that's right here on Fertility TV, and in my clinics here in San Diego. And egg quality
is always an important topic and one that I'm always discussing on a daily basis.
This channel, Fertility TV, is about making fertility information accessible to everybody
so that you can get the results that you need. So how could I not talk about egg quality,
which is also what we're talking about today, but I have many other videos on this topic as well,
because it's such an important topic and a topic that you all ask for on a regular basis.
Many of you have been misled, misguided, your hope stripped away from you because you've been
told that your egg quality is no good, or you don't have enough eggs to get pregnant. Well,
I do believe that that's not necessarily true, and I also believe that you have the power to
influence that. So we need to address that and empower all of you. In addition, you all have the
power. I have a mission to inform as many women as possible to educate you on how to improve your
fertility. And you have the power to help all of those couples throughout the world as well,
by liking this video and by commenting below and letting us know what you liked about it and
what really impacted you, what hit your heart the most from this video. And let's help more women.
Diet and fertility, and specifically diet and egg quality is so valuable and so important.
It's also why I talk about it so often in many of my videos, because so many of you are looking for
that quick fix and diet is not unfortunately a quick fix. It takes a lot of practice and
effort and dedication on your part to make those improvements, but those improvements
can really dramatically impact the quality of all the cells in your body, your overall health,
and your reproductive function. So it's not that I don't believe and support the use of supplements,
but we can't do that and ignore diet, and ignore the importance of diet and what needs to be done
there. So this video is really going to be focused on what you can do nutritionally to improve
the egg quality of the eggs that you're going to be using from cycle to cycle.
Okay, some key nutritional basics that I think are really important when we are dealing with
overall health and fertility, and really trying to impact the quality of the cells. So we're trying
to impact the mitochondrial function, cellular aging, and these things are dramatically impacted
by inflammation. I'm going to get into it in a little bit in terms of foods to avoid when
it comes to inflammation and how we need to look at this, but we're really dramatically trying to
decrease the inflammatory response in the body because we don't want inflammation in
the body. And we're also trying to support our immune function as well. These are key
concepts that need to be addressed in your diet. Some other basic nutritional foundational things
that I like to recommend is that we all are often looking at what food exactly should I be eating
or not eating? And I like all of us to take a step back and think about the quality of the food that
you're eating. In many ways, quality is going to be much more important than the specific nutrients
that you're eating. Again, I'm not saying those things aren't important, but if you are not
eating good quality food, that's going to be a major issue. So what exactly do I mean by this?
Well, we can all eat eggs or beef or chicken or fish or whatever item of food it is, but if I give
one of you farm-raised salmon with antibiotics and hormones, and I give the other one of you
wild salmon that doesn't have any of those things, no food coloring, no chemicals, who do you thinks
can fare better in that situation? The person who was given the farm-raised salmon or the person who
was given the wild salmon that was caught in the Pacific Northwest or Alaska? That's right, that
person who was eating the wild salmon, because it's more natural. We didn't add anything to it.
And these things are so important, we forget that when we go food shopping. So organic, wild,
pasture-raised meat products, organic vegetables, these things start to go to
the top of the list. Quality is so important here. I also recognize that for many of you can't always
spend that money on the quality of the food. So we do have to make choices. And if you have to
make choices, then above all, the foods that you should be spending more money on to get better
quality are anything that comes from an animal, whether that's fish, chicken, meat, whatever it
is. Any of those items should absolutely be at the top of the list of being, whether it's wild,
organic, pasture-raised, whatever that delineation is for each type of food,
then that's where you should be when we start talking about quality. Quality is so important.
Additionally, when we're talking about quality is GMOs, genetically modified foods. I want
you guys to avoid those things. Does it sound right you're going to be consuming food that is
genetically modified? In today's day and age, we shouldn't have to resort to that
and you shouldn't. I don't want genetically modified food in my body. You shouldn't
either. So we need to get rid of that as well. And then the other big one is avoiding pesticides,
which is why we want organic food. Pesticides can cause all sorts of havoc on our endocrine system,
not to mention that they can also contribute to cancer. So we don't want those things. So when
I start talking about quality of food, this is exactly what I mean. If you do nothing else that
I mention in this video, but change the quality of the food that you eat to better quality,
you will dramatically impact your health, your fertility, and your endocrine system.
Not to mention the health of the child that you're trying to create. All right.
Previously I talked about inflammation. Before I talk about inflammation, though, I have to
acknowledge the little one sitting behind me. It's not like he just came into the picture.
He was sitting over there before, and he just moved. So inflammation. Inflammation reeks havoc
on any issue that we have, fertility is no different. So how do we start to avoid
and reduce the inflammatory process in our body? Well, we need whole foods. We also talked about
quality of the food just a minute ago. That will dramatically reduce inflammation as well. But a
couple other things that you can do to be on top of that a little bit more is reduce and eliminate
artificial sweeteners and reduce added sugars. Any sugar that you add into products, get rid
of that. Gluten's also a big inflammatory item. It causes a lot of inflammation in the body. So I
want to have you eliminate. If you can't totally eliminate gluten, then dramatically reduce.
I think this is a good place for me to also mention that it's not always about
being perfect. Progress is what we're looking for. Not perfection. I say this often, it's
no more true when we start talking about diet. So really don't beat yourself up if you're not
perfect. Just make sure that you're being better the next day and that you're always
improving, which is called progress. Other foods that you can incorporate that
will help with this as well and your immune system is fermented foods, which I love. So that's kefir,
and that's sauerkraut, kimchi... The word was escaping me. So these are all great things to
add into your diet and bone broth. You've probably heard me say this over and over, but I love bone
broth. It's so good for us. It has tons of great nutrients. It's amazing for our immune system and
has tons of healthy fat. So those are some key things that you can be adding in right now to
work on having a more whole food diet, to reducing inflammation and supporting your immune function.
I do have a fertility food pyramid, which is a bit than what you're used to seeing in terms of the
standard American diet, which I don't agree with, that food pyramid. This food pyramid that you're
seeing on the screen right now is really based on a lot of the same concepts I just mentioned. We've
got the whole foods at the bottom and we build upon that. You've got soup and fermented foods and
so forth right along the bottom. And then you're building, you've got your meats and your veggies
and so forth all along the top. And what you see at the top of the pyramid is actually the grains,
which you didn't hear me talk about very much, because I don't want you having too
many of those because they can cause inflammation for a lot of us. So grains, which falls into that
gluten category is at the top, which means you have very little to none of those items.
You've often heard me say that I believe in customization or personalization or having
a unique plan for you. Diet is no different, but I do often get the question of, "Well, how much,
what percentage of this or that should I eat?" I'm going to give you some general guidelines, but the
reality is we need to find the right combination for you. And that is very, very important. I think
one of the things that's going to surprise you is how much fat you should be consuming.
Protein and carbs are 30% each, and then fat is 40%. Again, we do need to customize this for each
one of us, but that is the general rule that I like to give. And when I do talk about carbs,
that 30% really should be made up of a bulk of vegetables. That is where I prefer for that to
come from because we don't tend to eat enough vegetables in our diet. I want more vegetables.
I want more fat, good quality fat and good quality protein to make up the essence of every meal.
The other question that I get asked a lot is, "Well, how frequently should I be eating? Should
I be fasting?" I will say for most of us, we probably shouldn't be fasting or at least not
on a consistent basis. And I do think that's important. Maybe occasionally or once a week,
but not on a regular basis unless we've customized a plan for you that does fit that in. And there
are many of you that would be appropriate for, but I don't think it's for everybody. In general,
my rule of thumb in terms of consuming food is that we wake up and within an hour of waking,
we have breakfast. Maybe two, three hours later, depending on how you're feeling, you have a snack.
Then from there you have your lunch, which is a bigger meal, another two or three hours later.
Again, you have a snack mid afternoon, you have your dinner at a reasonable time,
let's say six or seven. And then maybe an additional snack before bed, but typically not.
And so spacing it out like that means you're getting enough nutrients and enough nutrition
throughout the day to feed ourselves and to give our hormones the proper nutrition they need and to
hopefully have proper hormonal balance. Again, we do all need a specific plan for ourselves,
which might allow us to fall into certain diet plans or crazes that are going around these
days. But in general, those are my guidelines. Now one of the other valuable things that we
didn't talk about is water. Water is extremely important. Many of us are dehydrated. We don't
drink enough water. That's no good for ourselves because our cells are primarily filled with water.
They need more fluid in that cell to stay nice and healthy and supple and hydrated.
Think about two different foods that are the exact same thing. Think about a grape, which has a lot
of juice and a lot of water, very hydrated, and think about a raisin, which is dehydrated,
doesn't have any. What would you rather your cells look like; a raisin or a grape? We prefer
the grape. That means you need to drink more. Stay away from too many dehydrating foods,
stay away from the sodas, the juices, all of those things. Drink water, and specifically drink half
your body weight in ounces. That's what we're striving for, which for many of us is about two
liters of water. My favorite way to do that is to get a liter bottle of water. Should be stainless
steel or glass, by the way, to eliminate any chemicals in toxins. And you know, you've got to
drink two of those in a day at minimum to hydrate your body. That makes it so much easier than
trying to count these, guys. That's much harder. So make sure you stay hydrated, make sure you eat
a whole food balanced diet. And one of the best ways to know that you're doing that is keeping
a diet log. That's right. I want you guys to start to keep track of the food you're eating.
Write it down every day so you can look back on it and reflect and recognize, "I did great here. I
didn't do so well here. I can be better there." So the next day you can be better. It's really easy.
Just have a pad of paper and start to document everything you need. With our smartphones,
you can also do it there. There's plenty of apps that will help you in that department.
Wow. That was a lot of information. Hopefully you all found a lot of value in this video,
and hopefully you took something new and informative from this video that you're
going to start to incorporate in your daily routine tomorrow. I want to hear from all of you,
what is it that you're going to take from this video? How are you going to change your diet for
the better so that you could have better eggs in 90 to 100 days? Comment below and let me
know. What's that going to look like? And if you want to know if you're on the right diet plan,
or more importantly and potentially better, if you want a customized nutritional plan for your needs
to get you the results that you want based on your lab results,
then I want to encourage you to apply to join my Hope Fertility Coaching Program.
All you have to do is fill out the application to see if you qualify. You can use the link in
the description below to do that. All right everyone, one quick,
last reminder to give me a thumbs up if you like this video. And if you're not
already a subscriber, make sure you subscribe by hitting that bell and getting notified when
I put out a new video for all of you. All right everyone, until the next video, stay fertile.