Lifestyle factors: the factors that can make a difference to fertility

IQOS has been very popular in the last two years, but there is no evidence that it is safe. For example, in the United States, there has been an epidemic of a lot of young people having some serious problems with consuming IQOS. The recommendation is to avoid smoking cigarettes and IQOS.  We still don’t exactly know the substance that it contains and the medium and long term effects on our fertility. My recommendation is to avoid smoking.

We have to know that HPV infection is a very common infection worldwide. More or less, 70-80% of the population is going to have this infection. There are some studies on this topic. In men, they were related with worse seminal parameters, and in women, they’re related with less good quality oocytes, but we don’t have any treatments to deal with it. We have to focus on prevention, so we have to manage it with a good vaccine program in childhood, not only women.  We assume that since we do the screening of cervical infection for women, but we shouldn’t forget that the vectors of the transmission of this virus are men, so we have to do a correct vaccine program to avoid this infection and to avoid the probable consequence of this infection on our health, not only for our fertility but also for possible cervical cancer.

High BMI is going to affect a frozen embryo transfer and fresh cycle because of the receptiveness of the endometrium. We have to avoid everything in our hands that could decrease our success rate, and obesity is one of them. We have to have a normal BMI to have higher chances of success.

If you are the egg donor, it’s going to affect the quality, and if you are the recipient, it’s going to affect the possibility of implantation. For example,  in obese women, it’s related to less endometrium receptiveness, but also early miscarriage or spontaneous abortion. The answer is yes. I think more or less 50% could be possible. For example, if we have the best embryo, if we have an euploid embryo and if the recipient is a cocaine consumer, the possibility of stillbirth is very high, so the overall success rate will be compromised. I would say it’s 50-50.

The best choice is the Mediterranean diet. The animal proteins are needed because of vitamin B12. If you are vegetarian, and you would like to improve the consumption of meat, I would say eat 3 eggs in a week and 2 pieces of chicken, it will be okay.

This is a difficult question because immunology is a recent science, and it’s developing very fast.  Right now, we know that we have more immunological illnesses than we thought. For example, to prevent inflammatory status, we have to avoid using a lot of technology like cell phones, Wi-Fi, we should avoid sleeping with our mobile phone next to us. We have to follow a Mediterranean diet, a good diet which will improve, for example, inflammatory illness of the digestive system. It’s a very difficult question to summarize in one minute. 

A good diet you have to support with supplements, iron, and other pregnancy supplements, which contain vitamin D, folic acid, a different type of antioxidants. If you have a balanced diet with a high quantity of monounsaturated fats, for example, avocado or nuts or bluefish. Avoid industrialized fast food, and you have to prioritize the vegetable proteins to animal proteins, but we have to eat animal proteins, for example, meat or fish would be better for a correct pregnancy evolution.

In a female with Polycystic ovary syndrome, we have to know if you have insulin resistance. This is the first step because if you have insulin resistance, we have a treatment for it, the medication is called Metformin.  That would help you lose weight because if we balance insulin and glucose – we are going to help your body to better assimilate the glucose. Also, that will help to decrease the transformation of this glucose into fat.

As I’ve mentioned before, we should not go to extremes, these are not good for us. We have to have a balanced diet. Eating has to be a pleasure, so if you don’t like to eat this type of bread, you can consume another type of bread, limiting the consumption of that type of bread.

It’s the same, it’s a correct diet, it’s a correct supplementation, for example, it has been suggested that supplementation with vitamin E can improve the endometrium’s strength. A balanced diet with the supplements that your doctor could recommend like vitamin C, D and CoQ10, in recent years, were very related to correct implantation.

I think if you are eating kimchi, it’s okay. Taking probiotic pills would be fine if you, for example, had some frequent episode of trush, then it would be fine to supplement the kimchi with probiotic pills.