After my last post about testosterone I figured I would give everyone a more feminine related post. Instead of a post about how to boost your estrogen, I figured it would be better to talk about how to have a healthy baby. The reason is that these two things go hand in hand.
For the most part, boosting your estrogen also raises your fertility. The better your fertility the higher your likelihood of having a healthy pregnancy. Everything works in conjunction with everything else.
It is important to emphasize just how important the health of the mother is during pregnancy. The general health of the mother is strongly tied to a number of birth defects that can happen during pregnancy and ultimately affects a wide range of things in the baby after birth including things like eyesight, IQ, ability to digest certain foods, and prevalence for the big three diseases of modern civilization (cancer, heart disease, and diabetes).
The health of the mom is so important that a doctor will frequently keep a close eye on a number of factors during the pregnancy.
Top Ways To Be Healthy During Pregnancy:
- Stop Drinking and/or Smoking – The research on this issue is exhaustive and the effects of drinking or smoking during pregnancy is pretty awful. The likelihood of having a miscarriage or having a baby with developmental issues if very high.
- Eat More Fat – Contrary to popular belief, fat is not the enemy. Human breast milk is 55% fat, 38% carbohydrate and 7% protein by calories. It only makes sense that a women’s diet should be similar to that ratio during pregnancy. A recent Harvard study also showed that women that consumed low fat dairy products on a regular basis as opposed to those that ate high fat dairy products had an increased possibility of infertility. As I have mentioned before, the best fats to increase in your diet are Omega 3’s, which are found mostly in fatty fish and grass fed animal products. With that being said it is also important to note that late pregnancy and breastfeeding women need up to an additional 700 calories per day in their diet with most doctors setting a bare minimum of 1,800 calories during this time period.
- Avoid Iron Supplementation – Women are often advised to take iron supplements because of the loss of iron through the natural menstrual cycle. Since women do not have a menstrual cycle during pregnancy they should avoid any iron supplementation during that time period to avoid any type of complications from iron toxicity such as malabsorption of necessary nutrients.
- Get Folate Into Your Diet – Because of the risk of neural tube defects most women are advised to take folic acid supplements during pregnancy. While folic acid is a decent supplement for preventing neural tube defects, in large amounts it can be detrimental to the mom by masking a possible B12 deficiency or even causing some other complications. It is best to get the more natural form of folic acid which is folate in the diet by eating foods high in it such as liver, legumes such as lentils, foods fortified with folate, and especially making sure you eat enough dark, leafy greens like spinach and kale.
- Get Your Exercise In – Exercise becomes really important during pregnancy because it promotes all the natural hormone development in the mom that helps pump all the necessary nutrients to the developing fetus. Even if it is just a daily walk of about 30 minutes, it is important to maintain a healthy amount of exercise during pregnancy.
This is a huge topic and I found out a lot of interesting stuff in doing the research for this article. When I get around to writing the book on health I am sure this topic will be greatly expanded. And I may possibly write a second part to this topic concerning everything that happens after pregnancy, but more on that later…
This is our 20th challenge in The Personal Health Challenge Series…