If you've been diagnosed with anovulation, you may be scrambling to wrap your head around
what this means. Essentially it is when a woman doesn't ovulate during her menstrual cycle.
This has obvious effects on your fertility, but the good news is that there are tons
of nutritional factors that are well in your control that you can work on to help you ovulate.
Hello! If this is our first time connecting, welcome!
My name is Melanie McGrice and I'm a fertility and prenatal dietitian. I help couples boost
their fertility and give their baby's the best start possible with the power of good food.
I have tons of videos available on these topics and am creating new ones
all the time. To keep up to date with the latest news, don't forget to subscribe to my channel.
In this video, I'm going to discuss some of the reasons why you may not be ovulating
and what you can do about it from a nutritional point of view.
We know that ovulation is essential for a successful pregnancy.
It's controlled by a cascade of hormones that are choreographed to form your menstrual cycle
and when one or more of these hormones veer off track, ovulation may halt.
The main cause of anovulation is PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome. This is a complex
disorder that wreaks havoc on your hormones and affects up to 20% of women of reproductive age.
What and how much you eat will affect your insulin levels as well as your sensitivity to insulin.
High insulin levels and insulin resistance play a big part in the development of PCOS.
So, it makes sense to focus on optimising your intake
to lower insulin levels and limit insulin resistance by increasing your body's sensitivity.
Insulin is mainly secreted in response to eating carbohydrate-containing foods.
The amount and quality of these foods will affect your blood sugar response and thus your insulin
response as well. To keep these levels under control, it's important to choose your carb
containing foods wisely. Refined foods such as white flour, white bread, white rice, pastries and
breakfast cereals, as well as sweet goodies such as fizzy drinks, chocolates and sweets are all
very concentrated forms of carbs. This means you get a lot more carbs in a smaller amount of food,
so it's very easy to eat too much. These carb 'injections' skyrocket your insulin levels. While
this is okay once in a while, when it happens regularly, your cells start to ignore the insulin
and become insulin resistant. Rather choose minimally processed or whole carb containing foods
such as wholegrains, legumes, fruits and vegetables. Not only are these packed with
healthy vitamins, minerals and antioxidants but they also contain fibre which helps to slow the
release of carbs into your body. The slower the release, the lower the insulin response.
Spreading your carbs out throughout the day (instead of having them all in one
meal) is also a good way to keep insulin levels down. The type of protein you choose can also
have an effect on your insulin response. It seems that choosing plant-based proteins, such as soy,
over animal based proteins like chicken and red meat also help to lower post-meal insulin levels.
Besides keeping insulin levels down, there are a few other ways you can increase insulin
sensitivity. From a dietary perspective, you can replace some of these refined carbs,
as well as saturated fats (from animal proteins and processed foods) with monounsaturated fats
such as olives, olive oil and avocados. A good example of this would be to have
a whole wheat sandwich with chickpea and avo mash rather than your regular ham and cheese
on white bread. Certain habits and lifestyle factors can also affect insulin sensitivity
such as exercising more and eating your last meal earlier in the day, rather than late at night.
PCOS isn't the only reason for anovulation. Being both overweight and underweight can significantly
increase your risk. This is because your adipose or fat tissue is responsible for producing some
of your sex hormones, like oestrogen. If you have too much fat your body makes too much oestrogen
and it acts like a contraceptive while if you have too little fat, there may not be
enough oestrogen to support the menstruation. Trying to get to a healthy weight can be tricky
and in some cases you may not be eating enough to sustain your reproductive cycle. When you
eat too little, your body tries to conserve as much energy as it can by shutting down
all the processes it doesn't need to survive. This includes reproduction. This is one of the
reasons why extreme dieting is not a good choice for women who are looking to fall pregnant.
All-in-all, the research shows that you can decrease your risk for anovulation by a whopping
69% by eating a healthy diet, exercising and optimising your weight. To get you started,
why don't you download my fertility meal plan at melaniemcgrice.com/fertility or
if you feel like you need personalised advice, go ahead and book
an appointment with one of our highly skilled dietitians
who can guide you through this process and help you maximise your chances for success?
That's a wrap for today, I'll look forward to seeing you in my next video!