Well, speaking about food – there’s no particular food that helps implantation or helps IVF outcome. What we know is that having a healthy diet it’s a positive thing. Basically I mean the Mediterranean diet. It’s one of the most recommended for this type of patient but there is not one thing that can make a patient have better outcomes while doing IVF.
Unfortunately, no sweets here. Sugar can harm your blood vessels, therefore decrease circulation. We need the blood flow to go fast and we need quality blood flow. The more oxygen in the blood gets to the uterus the better results we get. High fat, high protein, high fibre diet. In terms of fat fish (e.g. salmon) is the best. No sushi because it is a raw fish, no raw meat because we do not want to risk any infection like toxoplasmosis. Cooked fish is allowed, with salad. It may sound a little bit boring but a salad with a little bit of olive oil would be a perfect meal for you. Also, do not forget about supplements like Co-enzyme Q10, Omega oils, and vitamin D. We really need a good level of vitamin D in our blood for implantation to happen.
Remember that positive emotions are the best foods for your body. So, if you really need this little piece of chocolate before going to bed to make you absolutely happy, just go for it. Whatever makes you smile, whatever makes you happy, if it is just a little bit, you can have it.
High protein means meat. If you’re vegetarian, make sure that you are taking supplements for vegetarians so you’re not low on vitamins B and iron. The iron level has to be high because we need iron for oxygen.
Vegetables – you can have vegetables as much as you need. No fruit because fruit has a high level of sugar. But you can have many vegetables, salad with olive oil. Also, remember, to walk, to move so your body gets enough circulation, enough oxygen and that the food that you’re eating gets to the target. Because if you’re getting vitamins and microelements, you have to make sure that they get to the womb, to the uterus, to the endometrium, and to your ovaries. In order to do that you need this good circulation. Walking, hiking, exercising, having fun is all recommended. Remember, positive emotions will do even more than Omega.
Unfortunately, nothing related to diet is going to have such a short term impact on the outcome. The diet is important because the healthier you are probably, the better the results could be, and of course, the better the pregnancy is going to be. Thinking that if you modify your dietetic habits and customs in just a couple of days is going to somehow improve the implantation, that’s not, unfortunately, true, it is a false idea.
What you have to do is try to have a healthy diet before and then everything will be done in this sense. There are kinds of things that are very commonly asked, like if you can eat raw meat or sushi. These kinds of things are supposed to prevent getting infections like toxoplasmosis or things like that, but it’s not really related to better implantation.
Don’t expect to get any short-term benefit. If you want to start with antioxidants, a diet, or something like that, it’s better to start it 2-4 months before you start IVF. In this sense, we need to be very careful because, unfortunately, in some cases, patients do not have that time, and then you have to balance very well what you do. Let’s say that you are 42-43 years old, and you are obese, and you may want to lose weight because it is well known that having a normal body max index may improve the implantation rates, our recommendation in this case since time is crucial in these cases, is to go through IVF, obtain the embryos and freeze them. Once we have the embryos frozen, you can invest as much time as you want to lose weight before we implant them, but there is no point in delaying the treatment 6 months to lose 4 or 5 kilos because the benefits are not going to outweigh the risk of having worse eggs depending on your age.
Always think that what we are trying to do is improve the implantation, but first, we need to get the embryos as soon as possible especially, in cases in which patients are over 40.
