You can download a copy of the Acubalance Fertility Diet Book with recipes from the Acubalance website’s home page
Inflammaging
Aging is a natural part of life. However, many of us are experiencing accelerated aging as a result of systemic chronic inflammation also referred to as “inflammaging”.
Inflammaging (chronic inflammation) leads to accelerated aging and degenerative diseases including premature fertility decline. We are meant to live to about 120 years of age but instead we die in our 70’s to 90’s — and, during our last decade we suffer from many preventable and reversible diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and arthritis.
Lifestyle Enhancements
The good news is that these diseases are not necessarily age-related diseases. They are lifestyle-related diseases. Your sleep habits, exercise routine, diet, and emotional well-being have a huge impact on how well you age because they can negatively or positively impact body inflammation.
At Acubalance, our multidisciplinary approach helps turn back your biological clock and it starts with an in-depth evaluation of your overall health.
If you’ve been reading our blogs for a while, you already know that your fertility is most impacted by what happens in the 100 days prior to conception. Why? Because for 100 days prior to when you conceive, your lifestyle has a major impact on the quality of eggs or sperm you manufacture.
During these 100 days prior to conception, what you eat, how you supplement, how well you sleep, whether and how you move your body, and any other adjunctive treatments (acupuncture, massage, meditation, etc.) have their greatest effect on your eggs or sperm. We have seen countless clinical cases where implementing the Acubalance Peak Fertility Approach (including the 3 things in this blog) results in better quality embryos from patients who previously had poor responses to IVF. Since there is no fantastic test to tell us about the quality of your eggs or sperm, we use our experience with IVF patients to give us feedback.
If you’re trying to make a baby, you want to optimize the quality of the raw materials – your eggs, sperm and uterine environment – to reach your peak fertility.
Top 3 Lifestyle Tips for Optimizing Your 100-Day Fertile Window and Reverse Accelerated Biological Aging:
EAT. Eat regular meals, three times per day. Don’t fast for longer than 14 hours overnight, and do not do anything drastic with your diet (now is not the time for keto, very low-carb, fat-free, or any other crash diet). We want to not only send your gametes the density of high-quality nutrients they need to be their best quality, but we also want to send your endocrine system the signal that it’s SAFE to conceive. In times of famine or high stress, we see changes in ovulatory patterns that do not favour fertility. Eating regularly, not fasting too long, and making sure you’re putting lots of high-quality nutrition into your body (whole foods, minimally processed) is the way to send your body the signal that there are ample resources around for nourishing a healthy pregnancy.
SLEEP. You may not know this, but during sleep is when our bodies make the vast majority of our hormones, and daily variations of hormonal release are dependent on good-quality sleep. Of course, melatonin is the star sleep nutrient that everyone is talking about – and it does improve egg quality when it’s maximized in your 100 Day Window. Did you also know that men make almost all of their testosterone while they’re sleeping? Or that progesterone peaks in the morning, LH and FSH in the afternoon, and estradiol (estrogen) is highest overnight? These hormones all rely on us following our bodies’ natural circadian rhythms – being awake when it’s light out, and sleeping when it’s dark – in order to optimize their rhythms. I want all of my patients to be fully asleep between 10 pm-2 am (when your body makes melatonin, and many of the bodily repair processes are optimized), in a completely black room. I recommend getting 7-9 hours of good, deep sleep per night, and following a consistent bedtime and night-time routine. Proper sleep can help reverse accelerated biological aging.
MOVE. Interestingly, one of our major targets for both egg quality and sperm quality responds to specific forms of exercise – that’s our mitochondria. Our cellular batteries, and mitochondria direct many of the important steps of fertilization, implantation, and the beginning stages of embryo formation. Without adequate cellular energy, you may be unable to conceive. Luckily, resistance training (like weight lifting) is an easy way to boost mitochondrial function. A single 40-minute session of weight training stimulates the mitochondria for 72 hours – so my recommendation is to do 40 minutes of resistance exercise every 2-3 days.
While there are supplements, specific nutritional IV therapy, Chinese herbs, dietary adjustments, and acupuncture and low level laser therapy (LLLT) that we combine with the above to further boost Peak Fertility and reverse accelerated biological aging at Acubalance, these top 3 lifestyle factors play an important role in optimizing your chances of falling pregnant. Whether that happens in the bedroom or in the lab (depending on your life and fertility circumstances), reaching your peak fertility potential by incorporating the above 3 tips plus acupuncture & LLLT will help you get there faster and increase the likelihood of you bringing home a healthy baby.